The Tide Always Returns

Dear Friend,

There's a place I discovered at sunset a few nights ago, tucked behind the remains of what must have once been a small cottage. I found a dock there in surprisingly good condition — clearly private property. I turned to go, but a sign stopped me. To my delight, it read: “If you've wandered to this dock, please take your time. Explore. Enjoy. You're welcome here.”

Despite what I'd read, I looked around once more just to be sure it really was all right. I noticed a camera tucked in a tree — the place was not nearly as abandoned as it appeared.

I walked out onto the small dock cautiously, senses heightened. The golden colors of sunset reflected off the shimmering water, the gentle tide lapping against the wooden boards beneath me. As I stood there, I felt the calming beauty settle into my tired body. My shoulders began to relax, and before I even realized it, I was smiling. I stayed until the sun had long set, the katydids and cicadas crooning their evening melody to anyone within hearing distance. It was magical.

This morning, I walked down again to where the marsh grass gives way to open water. It was clearly the “wrong hour.” I found nothing but mud — cracked, grayish-brown, dotted with fiddler crabs and the bones of old oyster shells. It wasn't much to look at, just emptiness where water used to be.

I stood there, coffee going cold in my hands, and wondered how something so full at sunset could be so bare by breakfast. The water hadn't broken any promise. It does this every day, twice a day, whether anyone's watching or not. It goes out, and for a while, it looks like it's never coming back.

But it always does.

We all go through seasons like that, don't we? Seasons where it feels like the tide has pulled out and simply forgotten to return to us. A friendship that went quiet. A dream that emptied out before it ever filled. A year that felt more like mudflat than ocean. It's tempting, in those middle hours, to mistake the bareness for the whole story.

Magnolia Isle has taught me otherwise, if it's taught me anything. The water always comes back around. Sometimes it brings back what it took. More often, it brings something new — a shell you hadn't noticed, a current of cool water from somewhere new, a shoreline rearranged just slightly from the one you left yesterday. Either way, it comes.

My year has felt like that. This season of caring for my mom through her Alzheimer's has felt like teetering constantly between mudflat and ocean. A few times, I've wanted to quit everything. A few times, I've cried so much my eyes ached. Many nights I've gone to bed convinced I couldn't carry any more, only to wake up the next day and carry an even heavier load than the one before.

And still, always, the tide returns. And still, somehow, my head hits the pillow each night in gratitude — a gratitude that carries me through whatever low-tide season I'm standing in.

So if you're standing in some low, bare hour of your own this week, dear friend — I want you to know that the tide always returns. It may not come back on your schedule. It rarely does. But it always comes back, often ushering in something wonderful and unexpected, far beyond any plan you could have laid.

What in your life feels like low tide right now — and what do you suspect might be waiting, just past the horizon, to come back in?

Until next time,

—A Friend from Magnolia Isle