Growing up in San Diego, we found the beach to be our playground. Being a local kid, we knew the ins and outs of beach life. We knew the best time to hit Jack-in-the-Box for lunch, the best surfing spots, and how to manage beach parking. As a younger child, I remember my parents talking about “the parking issue,” but of course it wasn’t a concern of mine until the summer of my seventeenth year when I started driving to the beach myself. Before that, my Mom would drop us off at the mall, and we would take the city bus to the beach. It took about forty-five minutes, but we didn’t care. We would get off the bus at Pacific Beach, carrying our beach bags and towels. We would then walk the two miles south to “our” beach, South Mission, where we would spend the day. It was when we were in high school, and started driving ourselves to the beach, that we quickly realized the tourists took over “our” beaches, as well as “our” parking spots, from June to August.
The trick to beach parking was to get there ahead of the crowd. No teenaged beach bum is interested in getting to the beach at 10:00 am, but if you’re serious about your commitment to the sun and sand, you’ve got to make a few sacrifices. You must get there about two hours before the sun burns through the clouds. Usually, that was about noon.
Most often, we had either two or three carloads of kids headed to the beach. We would take turns being the early riser, and that car would be designated to get to the beach by 10:00. Because we were now driving, we had the luxury of packing beach chairs for the day, a crucial component in the unique find-parking formula. When the early car got to the beach we would park, unload our chairs, set them up in the middle of an empty space, and have a seat, thus saving the spot for our friends who would arrive about an hour later. We never waited for more than an hour or so, but we did have to deal with an occasional frustrated tourist who might roll their eyes when we said we were saving the spot.
Now let’s fast forward quite a few years. I’m now on the East Coast, Cape May to be exact. We were walking along Beach Avenue, where there is minimal parking at best. In this spot, there was only parallel parking along the street. It was a busy, end of the summer, Labor Day weekend, and there were a lot of people out and about. As we walked, the sound of a man’s voice caught my attention. He was speaking quite loudly as he leaned out his driver’s window. It took but a moment to see what was going on. A woman was standing in a parking spot, “saving it” for her friend that was in route. This man was having none of it. He put his car in reverse and started to back into the spot, telling her he was going to park in the spot whether she liked it or not. She did not move. He was getting closer and closer to her, assuming he could intimidate her or scare her off. He was sure she would move rather than let him run her down. She did not. He came within inches of hitting her, but she quietly stood her ground. Oncoming traffic was piling up as the man continued to yell and the woman. The divers behind him wanted to get by and were getting annoyed because they had to wait for him to move. She simply did not speak, and she did not budge. Eventually, the man said something rude to her and moved on, as did the traffic waiting behind him.
My lesson here is not about who had the right of way, but more about the way the woman held her ground. There are bullies all around us, trying to make us do life their way. Some are quite convincing. They try to persuade us that their ungodly way is a better way to live. It is not.
1 Corinthians 16:13-14 says, “Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong. Do everything in love.” And Colossians 2:8 says, “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.”
Be on your guard for those situations in your life that will try to move you away from your faith. Stand your ground, stay the course, and keep your eye on the goal of a Godly life.
Wishing you joy and peace,
Lorrie