Love Letter to Florida

I am humbled, awed and amazed by God’s goodness and favor toward me. I’ll tell you why, it’s simply this, because God moved me here to the Southern most tip of the great state of Florida and the continental USA, and I love it. I was driving Flora to her horseback riding lessons, viewing vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean on the one side of me, and the Gulf of Mexico on the other and thanking God. The colors of the sea were aqua and emerald, depending on the depth, the sunlight, and weather or not there was sand or sea grass below. Here and there the vast expanse of ocean was broken up by a small mangrove island or a sail boat. Otherwise there was only ocean on either side, shimmering on and on towards a faraway horizon that was yet another shade of blue. How did it happen that He allowed us by His Providential Hand (and His ministry purpose for us) to come to such a paradise? I feel so blessed. Humbled. And something akin to survivor’s guilt.

Now you will have to pardon me while I brag about Florida. I think that all of Florida, despite the palmetto bugs, mosquitoes, fire ants, strip malls, cookie-cutter subdivisions, etc., is a bit of paradise on earth. I have loved and appreciated the beauty of the various places I’ve lived: Pennsylvania, Northern California, West Virginia. I’ve been awed by the places I visited while traveling across the country twice when I was younger. Florida, though, holds a special place near and dear to my heart. I hated her at first. I wanted to get back “to my city by the Bay” when I first moved here frome there. My old best friend T (who was not impressed with Florida) once told me the reason I liked it so much was because I had good things happen here, chiefly meeting and falling in love with Big Daddy. Of course her point has merit. I know where and when I fell in love with Florida, though. It was when I first began canoeing down the Wekiva river as a teen. I felt my heart softening towards her though a couple of years before that. Sometime during my misspent youth I was trying, along with a friend, to see some punk rock rated R flick *. Of course, my friend was able to purchase her ticket and get in to the rated R movie without a hitch. I was flatly turned down and had to buy a ticket for the movie Cross Creek which was also playing. Turns out Cross Creek was a great movie, a real jewel, and though I probably denied it then, I loved it. The Florida background of the movie is as important a “character” in that movie as the actual main characters were, in my opinion, much in the way that the musical score and soundtrack is essential to Cameron Crow’s movies. Sometime after that, I acquainted myself with Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ writings and was smitten with both her work and the Florida locales that are so predominant in her works.

Back to the first time I canoed Wekiva - I was impressed. I was enthralled. It’s a mostly shady trip - huge oaks dripping with Spanish Moss make a canopy over the river. Banana spiders spin their large webs overhead, doing their natural pest control thing. There are cranes, turtles, fish, and on rare occasions, a small alligator or water moccasin. One can expend all the energy that is necessary to maneuver one’s canoe upstream on a warm (or hot!) Florida day and then refresh oneself at the end of the run by dipping into the cool blue-greenness of the Wekiva Springs. Then it’s all easy gliding back downstream to Wekiva Marina. It’s a lovely and easy run by which to initiate yourself with canoeing. As I began to visit, canoe, hike and swim the local springs, state parks and beaches of Florida I came to love and appreciate my adopted home state more and more. And there is still so much of this state that I have not yet seen. I hope to explore my new locale and truly occupy and enjoy the life and time the Lord has given me here, and fulfill whatever His purposes are in this time and place!

*By the way, as best as I recall it was Surf Nazis Must Die, but internet movie database tells me that it came out in 1987, which does not fit my time line.