I always thought it was cool that Peter walked on water to get to Jesus, but I now have a new appreciation for how hard that must have been considering the effort it took for Ray and my friends to coax me into jumping off of a divingboard into the water. To help you understand the significance of this event, let me give you some history.
My first memory of the water is being around 3 or 4 and sitting on the dock completely terrified of the lake we were vacationing at. I'm not exactly sure why I was terrified or have been fearful of the water ever since. It's not like I suffered some traumatic event, but I was never really comfortable being in water. In fact, many of my nightmares revolve around my house/apartment being flooded by a surging river or some horrific storm and me trying to escape from drowning.
While I was growing up we always stayed at motels with swimming pools. My dad tried to teach me how to swim, but my anxiety prevented me from doing much more than clinging to the side of the pool with floatation devices around my arms. When I was 17 I actually did learn how to swim. Don't ask me how I did it. I do remember going out to a lake with my grandparents' friends and their granddaughter and somehow I remember leaving confident that I could swim. Well, I could move my arms, kick my feet, and stay above water, but I couldn't go underwater....forget about jumping into a pool. Still, I really enjoyed swimming and during the summer inbetween my junior and senior year of college I would go to the community college's pool almost everyday and swim laps for an hour.
Fast forward about ten years later. Ray and I were visiting friends. They have a really nice pool with a diving board. Everyone was jumping in, but I waded in. When I was asked about why I didn't just jump in I admitted that I had never jumped in and that I was afraid of jumping in. They didn't push me. That was last summer. This summer I had made up my mind that I was going to jump in their pool. I didn't tell anyone my resolve, even Ray. Nevertheless, the issue came up again this past weekend about why I never jump in. Unlike last summer, it was just Ray, our friends, and me. A totally safe enviornment for me to try jumping in. Oh....did I mention that Ray spent his summer as a lifeguard???? If you're going to jump into a pool for the first time you should definitely have a certified lifeguard with you! :D
I had no idea that jumping in would be so hard. Seriously....it took me something like 15 minutes to just get on the divingboard. Jumping in? I think it took the better part of an hour of everyone encouraging me - even giving me verses such as "I can do all things through Christ." I wanted to jump in. I could even picture myself jumping in. Yet I could still feel the chains of fear wrapped around my ankles. I kept praying that God would help me to jump.
Do you want to know what finally got me to jump in? Ray said that if I didn't jump in that he would stop cooking for me. Go figure. Have I mentioned what a good cook he is? Even if sometime snails are on the menu :p. Anyway, I asked him to count to 3 and after he did I jumped. There were cheers of joy and as soon as I hit the water Ray swam over and grabbed me before I started panicking.
After all was said and done it felt great. I mean, I stayed in a state of shock for the rest of the day. Kinda like after the first time Ray kissed me....so it was a good kind of shock :). I've already decided that the next time we go over to our friends' house to swim, I will just jump in. After that we can work on diving. One step at a time!
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