Learning to Love the Ocean

Author: Kaitlyn Mast

Last summer will forever be the summer I learned to love the ocean. It’s not that I hated it before. I simply didn’t know or understand it; and so I feared it. Growing up in Pennsylvania, my family’s weekend outings were cookouts by the local mountain streams, water in a totally different way. The air was cooler in the forest, an escape from august humidity and smelled moist like wet leaves and buzzing mosquitoes. My brothers and I would spend hours building rock walls to contain the flow of the stream and form a pool deep enough to sit in. It was water contained and manageable. Always moving onward down the mountain, but in some small way we felt like we could control the ebb and flow of the waters we explored.

When I came to Taiwan, I found the ocean beautiful, but dangerous. Something I admired, but feared. There is no such thing as gathering rocks to contain the ocean or change the direction of its currents. While the mountain stream gurgled and sang as it went, the ocean roared and foamed against the shore. It far surpassed my control or understanding.

But last summer I learned to love the ocean. Living in the sweltering city heat, the ocean naturally became my new escape with friends on Saturdays. The particular day I’m remembering was windy. The waves were swelling and choppy in a way that I hadn’t experienced before, easily sweeping even my tallest friend off his feet. But while my ocean-loving friends were riding the waves, I was trying to stay in control and failing miserably. Every time a wave came I would try to stand strong against it only to get picked up and tossed head over heels. I was taking in mouthfuls of burning salt water and coming up coughing and fighting for breath. No matter how hard I tried to swim the ocean was stronger than the strength of my will to not be tossed by the waves. I feared the ocean, the undercurrent that might pull me out. I felt deeply the loss of control that I once knew in my mountain streams.

It was only when a friend taught me to surrender to the ocean‘s waves that I finally learned to ride them. It was more about watching and learning how they were moving. Feeling their flow and jumping along with them, letting them pick you up and move you in the same direction. It was not fighting against, only moving with, that finally allowed me to let go of fear and ride them to shore.

Learning to love the ocean is paralleling my learning to live missionally in Taiwan. Had you asked me a few months ago what God is doing, I would have been excited to tell you about how the YWAM base in Taiwan is partnering with YWAM Montana in something we’ve called the Surge. We have a goal, in three year’s time, through combined effort, to see 500 people become disciples of Jesus, to build relationships with 50 churches in Taiwan, and to send out 50 missionaries into long-term missions. 500-50-50 I would have told you is what is happening in Taiwan and it’s exciting!

This is still true and still exciting, but I’ve gained new perspective. Until recently, in my head Taiwan was the mountain stream and we were partnering together to build up enough stones to change the current of its culture. To turn a country filled with idol worship and materialism into a country that knows and loves Jesus. While this exciting, perhaps I’ve had some wrong perspective of what exactly we’re doing.

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to help teach two English kids’ camps for a week in Taitung, where a few YWAMers are pioneering a new base.  I’ve lived in Taiwan for three years now and until recently, aside from a few day trips, have hardly left Taipei City. It was a great opportunity to get to see more of Taiwan, but my initial excitement in going was diminishing quickly as the time came to actually go. I had just returned from furlough and had “important things” to catch up on. It had been raining for a week and I had been wrapped in layers on the couch trying to remember why I was here in the first place. Was I making a difference? Was it worth the cost? I wasn’t exactly in the mood to travel outside of my comfort zone.  

Reaching Taitung was like meeting the waves of the ocean once again and realizing I had been fighting them. The week was exactly what I needed to remember why I was here in Taiwan, because of the inter-woven chain of people I encountered.  I went down to Taitung prepared to make a difference and instead got a week’s orientation on how God has been letting each of us have a small part in the big picture of what He really is doing in Taiwan.

While in Taitung, our team stayed at the Rock Coffee shop the YWAM team has been running there as an outreach to the community. We slept in beds that a team of guys from YWAM Montana built last year and used the hot water heater the same guys installed this year for showers. We kept food in the refrigerator that was donated by a local church to the Rock. We sat surrounded by the map one DTS student created on a pallet and the mural another Taipei staff had painted to make the Rock more welcoming. Our arrival had been made possible by others long before we arrived.

In Taitung, we encountered God already at work in the community. At the church we worked with, kids daily showed up to the camp un-showered or without having had breakfast before they came, a consequence of the broken family system in Taitung. While we were playing ball with them, church staff were feeding them breakfast, cutting their hair and giving them showers. It was practical love that had been going on long before we arrived and would continue after we left. Each day we learned a little bit more of their stories through the church volunteers, heartbreaking and yet beautiful because they were here and experiencing God’s love in action!

What has stuck with me most was the dream of the youth director that we worked with while we were there. Every day when we had finished our part of the camp she would get up and remind the teenagers of her dream, that they would someday leave Taitung and go out into the world with the Gospel. In her words, we were English teachers sent from other countries by God to help them prepare to be the people that would be sent out in the future. We could tell the difference, that there were seeds of hope being planted, just by the way they worked so hard to practice their English.

I became smaller that week. Others had come before us to Taitung making it possible for our team to come. We were there for a week of refreshment for church members, who work there every week, and for the building up of kids who will hopefully also go out someday to the nations. We were a small part of the big picture. It wasn’t so much about what I was doing, but what God is doing.

Ask me now what God is doing in Taiwan and I would tell you that HE is building His church. The Surge, YWAM Montana, and YWAM Taipei are all just a part of what He is doing in Taiwan. We’re not building dams in streams; we’re being invited to swim in the ocean together.

This year, He’s been speaking to us, calling us to pursue Him instead of our busyness of gathering stones and building walls. His ways are like the ocean, far greater than we can currently understand. We have only to surrender to the waves and join with Him in what He is doing.

When I look back at last summer, I don’t remember the fear of being pulled under. I remember the awe of being small next to the waves that were so much greater than my own strength and the complete joy of getting swept up in something so much bigger than myself. I’m realizing again it’s all about Him and His glory.  The ocean is great. Will you ride the waves too?