The rocks by the sea

10-3-10
Today I found a wonderful rest and I wanted to tell you a little about it. We slept in – can you imagine? I slept in, alongside Melissa, until 10:00!!! We woke to the alarm that signaled 30minutes to the end of the free breakfast downstairs (6:30-10:30 and I wonder who was up at 6:30?). We finished breakfast and, as the cappuccino began working, got ready to go to the beach. Most places are not open on Sundays in Sicily (what an idea!! – I am wondering if the founder of Chik-fil-A is from Sicily?) and so a drive in the country and then catching some rays and basking by the Mediterranean sounded relaxing on our first day.

So, we drove off into the countryside with Melissa jokingly navigating but mostly soaking it all in and taking pictures and videos. The lady in our hotel said that only about 10miles or so away is a beach called Arenella and so we headed off in that direction. We saw the signs and drove that way, trying to look less like tourists and more like Italians (which means lots of crazy driving). Well, somewhere along the way we must have missed the sign for Arenella and instead turned a wrong way. Sometimes this would bother me intensely, but today I did not care if we had some adventure along the way. So, as we went, we began to not care if we made it to Arenella at all, but mainly just that we got to sit by the water and chill out for a while. So, at one particularly steep one lane road Melissa said, “Hey, look bikini girls! I bet there’s some beach down there!” So, we drove a little further, turned around and then decided to try the one lane, steep hilled, road.

Now, Melissa does not drive stick shift vehicles at all and so she has not clue what it is like to drive down a road like that, much less to parallel park on it and not roll back (or front) into anything around you, so to her this excursion was wildly fun, to me a bit stressful, but we have good insurance on the rental (thank goodness!). After getting parked with no dings and no hit walls or cars, we walked down to the water to find that this was not a beach after all – it was actually just a whole lot of flat rocks by the Sea, where locals gather to sun themselves and relax away their Sunday afternoon.

There were very few people there and it looked nice and so we agreed it was worth a try. There, down the rocks from a bunch of Sicilians, we had one of the most peaceful and restful days ever. We read and talked, prayed and napped, had lunch and just had a fantastic day!

After we were done there, we decided to drive down to Arenella just to see what it was like. A few miles down the road we found a lovely little beach, with tons of people (and it was 4:30 PM) that had lunch stands and chairs and was bustling and busy, with kids and their paraphernalia coming at us as soon as we arrived. We hurried to get away from there and then headed back to our hotel to get ready for dinner. But here’s what I learned:

Sometimes the best place for you is not the place you were looking for.

We went looking for the beach…we found the rocks – the rocks would have been anticipated to be hard and pokey and unpleasant, but they were perfect! It was the ideal place, and if we would have forced our way to the beach, we would have never found the perfect place. The problem with finding the perfect place, though, is that often times it requires you to allow a different idea, something you never considered, to enter your mind.

So many times we Americans are so wrapped up in our routines and our ideas (and everyone else’s around us for that matter), that we forget to really notice that the best place for us, the best thing for us to be doing, the most wonderful, fulfilling and amazing thing may be something that we drive right by and miss, each and every day!

So, my advice to you (and me), is to try in this day to live life willing to notice life around you – open your mind – have conversations with God about where it would be best for you to be. Open up the possibilities and allow the schedule and agenda that you cling to so tightly to gently float away and allow your life to open up into brand new steep hills and cool sea waters.