Colbi Pickett
East Coast Girls Coordinator

I felt a bit over my head as I paddled out. It was my first session of the season in a wetsuit, and I felt stiff and heavy. The waves were about 5-6, and you could hardly see them coming with the thick layer of fog that lay over the water. On top of all of that, I was coming off an injury, and I hadn’t surfed in about a month.

The whole session felt a bit eerie. Thankfully, I was surfing with a buddy, and he was frothing! He eagerly paddled out, and I couldn’t help but feed off of his energy! He was going for the set waves, which in turn made me go for the set waves. We joked when we ate it and missed waves, blaming it on “knocking the dust off.”  He easily changed my mindset of the session. What started as me not even wanting to surf ended with me calling some buddies afterward, telling them they NEEDED to get out there!

Our sessions in the water aren’t the only time we feed off of other people, it happens even more when we’re on land. We feed off those we’re around. We pick up their habits, their lingo, and their style. The beauty is that we get to choose who we want to feed off of, and in turn, we get to choose how people feed off of us. As for me, I want to feed people the love and the joy of the Lord. But the only way to feed others is to first have it in me. The only way to share that joy and love of the Father is to be closely connected to Him first! Above all things.

John 15:4-5

“Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

(Photo by: Ivy Scott)