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I Love the Beach,

but I Hate the Sand.

 

Most of the trips that my family took as I was growing up, were to beach destinations. I have been very fortunate and have seen many beaches in my life. Some of my favorites are Mykonos, Waikiki, Cabo San Lucas (read about my trip here!) and Key West. We also have a beach, Galveston, about 40 minutes away from my home in Houston. It is not the nicest of beaches, but darn it, it’s a beach and we love it.

If you ask me if I am a beach person or a lake person – no hesitation – I say I am a beach person.

I love the beach. I love hearing the waves crash on the shore. I love the seagulls, however annoying they might be. I love the smell of the salt in the air. But I hate the sand.

Sand is hard to walk in. Sand gets everywhere. Sand doesn’t wash out of anything. When I was younger, my parents took us to Hawaii. We were all up in the beach there. Sand castles, burying my sisters in sand, sand angels. We did it big that trip. For two weeks after we got back to Texas, I found sand in my hair every time I brushed it.

Now that I am a bit older, I have gotten crotchety and decided that I won’t put up with the aggravations of the sand any longer (aside from the times when my husband asks me to take a walk on the beach *swoon*). There has actually been (this is embarrassing to type) a beach vacation where I have not actually set foot on the beach. Thank you ocean front pools for making that a possibility.

Recently, I have realized how much of the “Love the beach, hate the sand” is applicable to life. We love the beauty, joy, blessings that life can bring us, but we find the nitty grittiness of life annoying and sometimes not even worth the hassle it takes to get to the good stuff.

And we have created ways to try to bypass the annoyances of life. Hate online ads. BLOCK EM. Hate waiting in line at the grocery store, SELF CHECK OUT. Hate waiting for things that you bought online. AMAZON PRIME.

We love the beach, we hate the sand.

Joking aside, there are legit things that we have started to bypass. Dating meet Tinder. Dieting meet Sketchy Pills. Shopping meet Credit Card Debt.

While yes, those things do make some of the tougher things in life easier, I don’t know that they necessarily make them better. When you lose weight, part of the victory is knowing that you worked hard to get where you are. And with that hard work, you have created a lifestyle change that will allow you to maintain your awesome new bod.

When you take sketchy diet pills, you are bypassing all the hard parts, and while that sounds good, you probably aren’t going to have as much satisfaction when you hit your goal weight and you are most likely not going to stay there because you didn’t actually have to work for it, so you don’t have the self-discipline to maintain the new healthy lifestyle.

I could talk for hours about how I think dating has gone awry, but I think I can sum it up with this: REAL LIFE IS NOT THE BACHELOR. And I actually really love watching the Bachelor! But you can’t just have the amazing dates with the helicopter rides, and the perfect picnic that the ABC Intern sets up for you. Life isn’t staged. And if you haven’t built a foundation on something solid and real, it will all crumble when life gets hard.

So yeah, it would be nice to have to skip the awkward conversation or rejections that come with the beginnings of dating, but every time you cheat yourself of the hard work, you run the risk of  diluting what you get in the future.

But just like the way I feel about getting to see the ocean, having to deal with the sand is so worth it. The first date I had with my husband was terrible. No really, we both texted my mom (remember we were family friends, so it is less weird) and told her that the date was really awful and we didn’t think there was any way to save it. We affectionately refer to it now as “Disaster Date”. We had no idea how to move from friends to ‘more than friends’. And there were a lot of weird moments. But we both knew that we liked each other and wanted to give it a fair shot.

I couldn’t be more thankful that we both put up with all of the silly little things so that we could get to the good stuff. Because y’all, being married is so good.

The sands of life (I sound so wise right here, yes?) may seem frustrating or unnecessary, but that is what makes the sweet things so much sweeter. To get to the ocean, you’ve gotta have the sand.

So the next time you go to take the easy route (this does not include Amazon Prime because AP is a dang blessing), spend a minute thinking about what long-term benefits you might be giving up down the road.

What is something that you love (ocean) but get fed up with the baby steps of getting to it (sand)?

Things like: cooking, budgeting, getting in shape, organizing.

I would love to hear in the comments!