She Sees Seashells in the Sidewalk

I hate to exercise. Truly, that's not an exaggeration. I hate it. Strange, because my husband, three boys, and daughter-in-law all love it. They find it exhilarating - even stress relieving, but I don't. I find it tedious, taxing and boring beyond belief.

The apartment complex we live in has an onsite gym so I can use any kind of work-out equipment I want. Shortly after we moved in, I went in every day for two weeks to do the gym thing and separated a rib from my sternum. The pain was so bad, I thought I was having a heart attack, but no; the doctor assured me it was just too much exercise. Thank goodness for that! I quit that ill-fated nonsense immediately.

Looks like walking will be the safest choice for me. So, I commit myself to walking...in Oregon...where it rains more days than the sun shines. I buy a pedometer, a heart rate monitor, and a new pair of shoes. Steven gives me his old IPod, so now I need to get an arm band to carry everything. Getting my stuff together and strapped on my body takes just long enough to reconsider and find something more interesting to do, like play one more game of spider solitaire on the computer - anything to avoid the inevitable!

Well, when all the excuses run out and I'm hooked up and ready to go, I set out for my morning walk. Around here, it's more like an hour of dodging worms, slugs, and non-caffeinated workers on their daily pilgrimage to Starbucks.

Despite the fact that I'm outside walking, it doesn't take long for my mind to figure out that this is the same three mile loop we walk every day and there really isn't any forward momentum to it. Mind-numbing boredom sets in. Tedium. To add interest, I turn left at the corner and make my way up heartbreak hill. My heart rate monitor jumps to 158 and I slow my pace to ease my breathing.

A sixty something year-old woman passes by on my left running with hand weights that she pumps up and down.

Are you kidding me?

She's not even sweating. I am incensed. I am outraged. I am appalled at my own lack of conditioning and bend over to catch my breath. As I stare at the cement, I notice something stuck in it.

What is that? I wonder. It's a seashell. Suddenly, the old Sesame Street song "One of these things is not like the other" runs through my head as I try to figure out why a seashell is stuck in the sidewalk. I am enamored by it, I'm fixated by it. No, I'm lazy and looking for any reason to stop walking.

My walk continues up the hill and around the corner. On the back side of the hill, the down grade can be as jarring as any jog so I walk slowly not to disrupt anything in my spinal column. Oh, look at that...another shell. No, it's a double one! There on the sidewalk in the middle of my tedious routine is an upside down double seashell stuck in the concrete.

Why are there seashells in the sidewalk? Why are they perfectly whole? Why are they always upside down?

An obsession is born. I ask my friends, but they don't know. I pose the question on my Facebook page and no one has a clue. I ask my sons, my sons' friends, and anyone else I talk with for the next two weeks, but everyone just stares at me and shrugs their shoulders. "Dunno," is all I hear.

I've followed the Lord long enough now to know that whenever I get fixated on something, He wants to teach me something new. So after two weeks of asking everyone else I know about seashells in the sidewalk, I decide I should ask the Lord instead. The next morning I hook up all my paraphernalia, and go directly to the double seashell on the hill. For several minutes I stand over it just looking, listening, and waiting.

They don't belong together - beauty and mud. Yes, sand comes from the beach and they use it to make cement, but the context of each sidewalk square is still ugly, hardened mud. After all it has been through to get to this place; the shell is still beautiful, still fragile, and still whole even though stuck in the ugliest of surroundings.

We live in an ugly world. Our context as Christians is one of inflexible, unrelenting evil, yet God promises us that He will make us new. 2 Corinthians 5:17 declares that we are "new creatures in Christ," even though the context in which we live hasn't changed at all. This is the promise of old things passing away and all things becoming new!

We still can be whole and beautiful even if our life context was one of neglect, abuse, or abandonment. We can be whole and beautiful despite poor decisions in our teens, or self-absorbed decisions as adults. In fact, the uglier the surroundings, the more stunning that seashell becomes. Despite the sifting and grinding that goes in our world, the Believer can come through whole and unbroken. It is God's intention to see us through to wholeness. He can heal all of it. He is the God of redemption and restoration.

One more thought occurs to me as I stand over this beautiful, fragile seashell trapped in a slate of mud. It is upside down. Every shell I have seen has been so. Always, they have been upside down - just as we are in our world. To the world that looks at us, we appear upside down. Scripture uses the word, "foolish," in 1 Corinthians 1:27. "But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong."

I love that! No matter what horrible, hideous, despicable context my life began in or has been set in, God will use it to make me beautiful. Instead of defining myself by my old context now, I live in contradiction to that context and define myself by what God says about me. I am a new creature...old things have passed away, behold all things have become new!

Well, I must hurry out for my morning walk. It is amazing what new and exciting things God points out in the midst of routine, tedious, boredom. I can't wait!

Copyright © Donna A. Tallman, 2009. Please contact author at delsie2002@yahoo.com for permission to reprint.