On Saturday mornings, there’s usually one place you can find me: staring at the ocean with a coffee in one hand and a doughnut in the other. I used to think the ocean was just OK. I mean, it is so large. So vast. So uncontrollable.
Over the past few years, my heart toward the ocean has been changing. Instead of avoiding it, I’ve been drawn toward it. A turning point was about a year and a half ago when I decided to start my Saturday mornings there.
I would go to Sidecar doughnuts by myself, grab a donut and coffee, and park by Twin Dolphin Drive. It’s amazing what you can accomplish before 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning while the community is still sleeping.
I would walk through the mostly empty sand and plop down on a towel feet away from the waves. And then, I would talk to God. I would listen. I would wonder. I would bite into my gluten free doughnut of the week and sip my coffee with the waves coming in and going out.
It felt right. I started getting used to that fact that there are things that I can’t control. And, that’s normal. That’s life.
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If you asked me where I would be five years ago, I would tell you living in New York City. Living in an apartment above a coffee shop in Paris. In Los Angeles on the set of a movie.
The reality is that I’m exactly where I was five years ago. I’m living in Orange County and working for the same company. And yet, even though I’m in the exact same place, everything has changed.
My job. My roommates. My church. My friends. My boyfriend.
Roommates have come and gone. I’ve changed churches. I have friends who have moved away and new ones who I’ve been doing life with. My department at work looks completely different. I’m doing different work and I have a new role leading a team that I couldn’t be more thankful for.
My heart has changed.
I’ve started letting people in. Letting more people go. I’m learning to give my heart to God and a man named James who likes to go to Sidecar Doughnuts on Saturday’s too.
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Now on multiple days a week you can find us at Pacific City in Huntington Beach. Our first date happened here. Our first dinner after we decided to be in a relationship and our first fight took place in front of the waves and the water with a cup of Philz coffee in our hands.
We’ll come here on Fridays and pack a picnic for dinner or in the middle of the week just to catch the sunset.
It’s seen so many different sides of us. And I think that’s pretty cool. That places get to see us grow. That even if the setting of our lives is the same, we don’t have to be. We can change.
We can choose what kind of people we want to be, regardless of whether we are in New York City, Paris or Orange County.
Our location isn’t going to change that. Our circumstances won’t change that. We change that.
While we are changing, the places we live our lives get to see us grow.