69

Paige parked a few blocks from the beach, crossed the concrete boardwalk, and took off her sandals so she could feel the cool sand on her feet. There was a strong breeze blowing in from the water, creating small whitecaps on the waves. She pushed her hair out of her face and filled her lungs with the smell and taste of salty beach air, a purifying blend that seemed to clear her mind and reduce the pressure squeezing her from every side.

She rolled up her jeans and walked down to the wet sand next to the rolling waves, sandals in one hand. She walked along the beach, letting her mind wander. The reflected light from the nearly full moon danced on the water and, together with the distant light from the high-rise hotels on the boardwalk, lit her way. There were a few tourists hanging out, some kids with glow-in-the-dark bracelets and light sabers, a couple holding hands, even some teenagers swimming unsupervised. Paige felt like she could pick out the locals—like the guy with a dog off-leash, in and out of the waves, chasing a tennis ball. But for the most part, the beach was deserted, Paige’s private ocean sanctuary. So she walked, thinking about the challenges ahead and feeling Patrick’s loss on a deeper level than she had in a very long time.

Somebody had told her that grief was a companion on a journey, not just a moment in time, and tonight it walked heavy beside her, reminding her of everything she had lost. She longed to have him here with his arm around her shoulder, pulling her tight, telling her that everything would be okay. She would find strength from his confidence and security in his love. She would know that whatever was about to happen—whatever people said about her or believed about her—he would know the truth and he would love the person she really was. He would remind her of that, and she would know that nothing could tear them apart.

But tonight, all of that was replaced by the sudden grief that had made a roaring comeback, cutting through all the pressures and dangers in her life and reminding her that no matter what happened, it could never be worse than what she had already endured. The suffocating loneliness. The shattering of dreams.

It was in this moment, walking close enough to the water that an occasional wave would wash up and lap over her feet, that she thought about Patrick’s faith. It was stronger than hers, and she knew he would have taught her by example. This God who had grown distant to Paige had permeated nearly every aspect of Patrick’s life, every strand of his thinking. He had talked about praying on the battlefield and how God had sustained him in SEAL training when he felt like quitting. Patrick’s strength had been drawn from a well of prayer and Bible verses and a healthy dose of God’s Spirit.

Paige stopped and turned to face the sea in front of her, staring out at its vastness, letting the rhythmic churning of its waves remind her of God’s cathartic power. Patrick had told her that he came here often, maybe not to this exact spot, but to this same shore, and had developed his own unique prayer ritual to remind him that God’s power was greater than anything he faced. It was time, Paige knew, for her to do the same.

She turned and took a few steps away from the water, kneeling in the wet sand. At first, she looked around to see if anyone might be watching and then decided that she didn’t really care. With her finger, she wrote the words in the sand. She wrote them large, starting with the things that had driven her out there that night. Contempt. Obstruction. Telling Wyatt. The Supreme Court.

The words were out of reach of the waves, the same way Patrick had described writing them when he first told her about this ritual. She took a few steps and, a bit farther from the waves, wrote again. Fear. Reputation. These were the things eating at her soul. A desire to have men and women speak well of her. Endlessly climbing to achieve and to prove herself worthy.

The last thing she wrote, and the word she placed farthest from the water, was Patrick’s name. She wrote it deep in the sand, with large block letters, because the scars from his death were deep, and in part of her soul she knew that she blamed God.

When she had finished, she took a few steps away from the water and sat in the dry sand, wrapping her arms around her knees, watching the waves wash in. Patrick had done this too. The waves reminded him of God’s power and sovereignty washing over everything he faced. He would inscribe in the sand those things that struck fear into his own heart or represented his darker nature. Then he would sit on the beach and pray as the waves did their inevitable work, smoothing over the crevices that formed every word, replacing the challenges and heartaches with ten thousand new grains of sand.

And now Paige watched it happen herself—while she prayed, the words began to fade and disappear. The tide was coming in, and she began to spot the larger waves as they made their way to shore, crashing through the ones rolling out, increasing the reach of the tide, swooping up the small incline of wet sand, covering the things Paige feared.

It didn’t take long for the water to erase the first set of words, and Paige found that what they represented began to feel less dreadful. Her apprehension about telling Wyatt that Kristen wanted her to replace him, the upcoming hearing in front of Judge Solberg, her fear of being charged with obstruction, her angst about arguing at the Supreme Court. None of that seemed quite as daunting as before.

After several more minutes of praying—more confession than anything else—the words fear and reputation began to erode as well. It took a while for a wave that was large enough to reach that level of the sand, but Paige was patient, and she found the prayer time surprisingly intense and empowering. The same Spirit that Patrick had talked about invading his life became a part of hers as well.

It was, she knew, the Spirit of Christ, the same Spirit that had sustained him before his own hour of challenges and sacrifice. She had prayed to Christ when she was younger, but never quite like this. This was new and different and more personal, reflecting an intimacy and reverence she had learned from a few short months with the man whose name was still etched in the sand just a few feet away from where she sat.

Eventually all the words were gone except for Patrick’s name. She had carved it at the very edge of the wet sand, and even the strongest waves had not come near it. She had done so intentionally because she knew that this would be the hardest wound of all. Even if everything else could somehow be washed away, this one gaping hole would remain.

She lost track of time that night, praying and mourning but somehow in the process also gaining strength. After two hours she stood and walked a few steps to Patrick’s name. She knelt, kissed her fingers, and touched the sand. Then she stood, took a long, final look out over the ocean, and headed back to her car.

She knew nothing had changed in the physical world that night, but her steps felt lighter and more certain than they had before. The pain still stabbed at her heart, yet the fear wasn’t there anymore, squeezing her and scrambling her thoughts. Things would not be any easier in the days ahead and there were still a lot of mountains to climb. But as she trudged back through the dry sand, the cool grains sifting through her toes and the wind blowing her hair across her face, she somehow knew that she would be equal to the task.

Or at least that’s how she felt right now. She would sleep tonight. Tomorrow could take care of itself.

Two hours after she left, in the quiet night air of a deserted beach, a wave crashed ashore at the height of high tide and washed farther up the bank than any wave before it. It crested far above the place where Paige had written Patrick’s name, making its way almost to the impression left in the dry sand where she had been sitting. And when it washed back out, the sand where Patrick’s name had once been recorded was as smooth and flat as every other area around it.