Community Matters when there are Sharks in the Water!

Community matters for many reasons, but this week, I saw firsthand the importance of community during our beach vacation.

We woke up early, packed our stuff and selves into the van, and drove to Florida. We really enjoy this one military beach because we’re always reminded that being part of the military community matters.

There’s a sense of camaraderie between military families.

Our kids make instant friends.

We might belong to different branches, but we’re all part of the same brotherhood.

Conversations are easy about our shared experiences as military families, and we watch out for each other.

By the time we finished the long drive, carried all the food, towels, chairs, etc. across the hot sand, and set up our canopy, we were ready to race into the cool, refreshing ocean.

I had barely been in the water a few minutes when I saw dark shapes moving towards us. Hopeful for dolphins, I began to move towards them.

Luckily, someone on the beach yelled, “SHARKS!”

Grateful for the eyes of the others, I quickly abandoned any effort to look more closely for myself and hightailed it out of the water.

We spent the next hour or so watching wave after wave of shark groups following schools of bait fish into the very shallow waters just a few feet from shore.

The crystal clear water, even in the waves, allowed us to watch the sharks playing in the surf. We were all fascinated, but after awhile, we wanted to get in and swim.

Keeping the kids on the beach, I decided we hadn’t seen a shark for sometime and thought I would wade out a bit to see if they were gone.

I was barely in hip deep waves when I thought I saw something, but wasn’t sure what. One of the other mothers on the beach was calling out, “shark!” I didn’t wait for her to tell me twice.

When I got past the sandbar and the water barely covered my feet, I felt safe enough to catch my breath and quit doing my best Jesus-walks-on-water interpretation!

She walked over to me and said, “a shark was less than four feet from you.”

I had no idea it got that close! PHEW. I am really glad I didn’t know that until I was safe. Talk about alarming!

I had seen a small shark coming close and was slowly moving away, but I must have missed the larger one that chased me into shore.

I believed myself perfectly capable of watching out for sharks, able to see any potential dangers. Turns out, they are harder to see from inside the water. Surprisingly, they don’t always surface enough for that telltale dorsal fin to be visible.

Being too close meant I didn’t have the best perspective. I thought I was being wise and cautious, but I couldn’t see the shark that just about got a mouthful of my backside.

Sometimes, life can be like those sharks in the water. We can be too close to a situation to see the dangers clearly.

When we can’t see clearly is when our Christian community matters the most.

We need people willing to yell, “SHARK!” into our lives.

Several years ago, a friend was trying to witness to her husband’s Army friend. After her husband deployed, she wanted to make sure to keep sharing Christ with his friend. I knew her heart, but saw that this situation could easily become disastrous.

It was a difficult conversation, but I needed to yell “Shark” when I felt like she was at risk of him developing feelings for her. Blessedly, she was able to hear truth in love. While continuing to invite him to church, she made some choices about how to maintain appropriate distance. Crisis averted, narrowly.

As she built distance between them while her husband was away, this friend’s motivation for being close became clear, and it wasn’t a desire to know Christ. We will never know what could have happened, but she was able to protect herself, her reputation, her marriage because I was better able to see the shark.