It’s been exactly a year and a half since my friend Julie and I encountered two men on a beach in Durban, South Africa – who chased us and then forcefully took all of our belongings. Since then, I’ve had anxiety about certain situations and have found that I don’t enjoy going to beaches anymore. I’ve started to process and heal, and in that, found a forgotten blog entry that never got posted. Hope you enjoy reading it!
{written in Gabarone, Botswana: February, 2016}
The day it happened was carefree and light. “My favorite day on the race” I texted my family back home. The waterpark was on the beach on the Indian Ocean, cerulean blue as far as you could see. I laughed so much it was impossible to feel anything but happy, running around with friends and piling as many people as possible into huge rafts. An elderly man bought my friend Julie and I ice cream cones as he told us about his late wife and her love for traveling. I ate lunch with three other girls at a restaurant at the end of a boardwalk, water all around us. Julie and I had coffee with our squad parents, soaking up every bit of wisdom they gracefully doled out. Life couldn’t get much better.
Then our picture perfect day collided with two Indian men on the beach, men who didn’t speak our language. Memories from the day are etched into my mind: Julie and I hunting for South African flag stickers and patches, taking pictures on the boardwalk, facing my fears and going down the ‘big slide,’ then later that day – seeing two men leaving the beach as we entered, later seeing them kicking a plastic bottle between them before they approached us, my pink Bible in one of the men’s hands as they ran away. It had 50 rand in it and dates written next to underlined versus.
It wasn’t my passport or money or even my point and shoot camera that were gone that bothered me the most. It was the note from Addison, my niece. My pictures of Addison and her brother, my nephew, Max. The cross and fortune that Brock left in my wallet. My South African sticker and patch. All the pictures from the waterpark. Little things like my hairbrush, my Eos lotion and lipgloss, my little bottle of aloe, the shirt my parents gave me before the race. Little comforts.
Tonight I’m listening to a song by one of my favorite bands, Trampled by Turtles. I wrote down the lyrics in my journal. “The days and nights are killing me, the light and dark are still in me. But there’s an anchor on the beach.” At first, I thought I was writing down the lyrics for myself. But I realized I was writing the lyrics for the men who stole from us on the beach.
Most of the things from my bag have been replaced. The day after it happened, a friend on my squad handed me four twenty dollar bills. I’ll get a new debit card brought to me in Madagascar. At some point on the race, I’ll get a new phone. My squad mama gave me her sunscreen before she left. My teammates Bekah and Rachel gave me a sticker and patch. I’ll buy a new hairbrush. It’s been pretty cool to see how God restores things.
But those two men on the beach are also children of God. Although it may be hard, I’ll work through forgiveness and will continue to pray that they find the freedom I’m finding in Christ this year. I can’t imagine living a life of that type of chaos – security only found in taking taking things from others. But maybe there’s something more, even for those men. Maybe, just maybe, there’s conviction through my stolen Bible and Julie’s Christian music on her iPod. Maybe, just maybe, they could possibly find hope and stability in the Creator of the universe through this encounter.
Maybe there’s an anchor on the beach.
