I just got home from spending a week away at the Outer Banks and while I was there I had a moment of clarity. I was sitting on the beach in my chair watching my kids play in the crazy, choppy surf. Meanwhile, Ellie(3), my second oldest was playing away from the water collecting seashells. ALL week she had been bringing seashells to my feet and telling me “look at this one daddy!”. She was so excited to show me these seashells. The interesting thing was that nearly every seashell was broken, cracked or incomplete.
At one point I looked at all of these seashells at my feet and on the tip of my tongue I almost said, “Ellie, can you find the seashells that are Not broken?” But as soon as I thought it, I realized there was an opportunity for enlightenment. I wanted Ellie to look for only the perfect ones, and the ones that were pretty to look at. But what I realized a moment later is that Ellie didn’t care if the seashells were broken. She ONLY cared if they were seashells. She didn’t look for the pretty ones, or the unbroken ones — she looked for every. single. one. If she saw a seashell — she picked it up. “Let’s go find some more”, she said. At this point she is dragging me across the entire beach, frantically trying to grab up all of these seashells. I finally asked her, “Ellie, why are you picking up all of these seashells? Even the broken ones??” and she said something so incredibly wise beyond her years, she said, “because”. Haha. So much for that Hallmark moment. But in reality, the point is that she didn’t have a reason. She just loved them all.
So I picked the most broken, tattered and ruined seashell I could find and I asked her, “why do you like this one?”. She pondered for a moment and said “because it’s blue”. I hadn’t even noticed the color of it because of how broken it was. I asked her again, “why do you like this one?”, she would say “because it’s pointy”. I’m sure Ellie has no clue the underlying significance in that. But for me there was a lot to learn from that moment. I went on and on asking her why she liked her seashells and she would find something special about each one.
Ellie reminded me that no matter who it is in life, no matter what they look like, the color of their skin, life choices or any other means we use to judge someone, we are all just broken seashells. Even the prettiest shells had a flaw about them. Some were more obvious while others were better hidden. But no matter their condition, there’s something “special” as Ellie would say about each one. It takes special people to see the significance of each person — no matter how they appear at face value.
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