I am volunteering at Ohio Business Week, spending seven days with high school students who are emerging leaders interested in entrepreneurship. I’ll have plenty of inspiring stories to tell, I’m sure! In the meantime, I hope you’ll enjoy this repost from two years ago. It’s one of my favorite stories.

What do my Dad, a stranger on the beach and a beautiful seashell have to do with Being Fully Present? Read on…

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There are days when I firmly believe that the spirits of those who came before us now dwell among us. I don’t mean their souls – this isn’t about eternal life or temporary respite in purgatory or forever damnation, if you believe in such afterlives. This is about spirit; a presence we can feel but cannot see or touch. Many have experienced it and yet we can’t really explain it.

I have no facts to base such beliefs on but, every once in a while, something happens that reminds me of that very real possibility. Take our recent trip to Marco Island, Florida, for example.

Marco Island

If you love shelling, Marco is a great place to be. I was like a kid in a candy store on our first visit last year, scooping up dozens and dozens of beautful shells to bring home. This time, my husband and I decided that we were going to try and have a little self-control and be more selective about what shells we wanted to take with us. We decided to focus on just a couple of harder to find shells. The thrill of the hunt, so to speak.

While walking on the remote TigerTail beach during our last visit, we met a delightful Canadian couple who introduced us to the “olive shell.” We decided to make that one of the shells we would be on the lookout for. During our stay we found several and were pretty pleased with each discovery.

Side story…thoughts of my Dad…

The trip to Marco Island was a celebration of my college graduation, a mere 38 years after I graduated high school! Graduation weekend was a wonderful family celebration of a personal milestone. I often thought about how proud my Dad would have been, had he lived to see that day.

While we were on Marco Island, my husband and I also celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary. As we reminisced on that day, I couldn’t help but think about my Dad walking me down the aisle and how much he and Mom loved my husband.

I was also looking ahead to Father’s Day, coming shortly after our trip. With our second grandchild on the way, I once again spent time thinking about how much happiness Dad would have gotten out of being a great-grandfather. He loved his grandchildren very much and both he and Mom would have been beside themselves with joy at being great-grandparents.

Dad was very much on my mind during this trip.

Marco Island

One morning, as my husband and I walked the beach, an older gentleman was walking in the opposite direction. He wasn’t very tall, was a little heavier than stocky, had silver-blond hair and rosy cheeks. He reminded me of my Dad.

“Hey, you lady, what do you have there in your hand?” he almost shouted as he approached me, pointing at my right hand.

I couldn’t help but notice that he had a German-sounding accent, like Dad. Somewhat confused and taken aback, I opened my hand to show him it was empty.

“Nothing, at all,” I said, laughing. “Just a ring on my finger.”

He quickly placed something in my outstretched hand and said, “Well, now you have this.” And, then, he kept on walking.

I looked down in my hand and saw the most beautifully colored and perfectly shaped olive shell. It was as shiny and as flawless as any shell I’ve seen and was most certainly the best olive shell of our trip.

I showed my husband. He agreed it was a perfect olive shell. He also commented about how the man kind of looked and sounded like my Dad. What an odd, yet pleasant, encounter that was.

That brief exchange brought me much more than a beautiful shell. It also brought a sense of peace. Looking back, I realize now that my thoughts of missing Dad went away, perhaps moving down the beach with that stranger.

It was almost like Dad had reached out somehow from wherever his soul is resting, to tell me not to fret about what he might be missing. I was reminded in that moment that Dad’s spirit lives on and he knows what is happening in our lives.

In the form of an old man giving me a sea shell, I was also recieving a gift from Dad’s spirit, I’m sure; the gifts of presence and of peace.

The Olive Shell