When my mom was a little girl, she spent many of her summer days at the home of her Nana and Pa, Helen and Hugh, in British Columbia. The great old house was tucked into a protective blanket of fir trees, just up the fern-covered bank from the edge of the glassy waters of Sproat Lake.
When she was 4 years old, Grandpa Hugh decided it was high time his little girl learned to swim. There was so much activity down at the water, the little boat, the dock, the swimming, the fishing. Not too far off shore there was a little island, and other children would scamper out there to build forts, and craft all kinds of adventures until the "time for dinner" bell yelled from any of a dozen nearby sun-porches. It disheartened him to watch her taking it all in from the safety of dry ground. He wanted her to enjoy the lake, to experience it, and not just stand there tentatively on the shore, shyly tugging at the straps of her life-vest.
One summer afternoon, he helped her out of the vest, walked her to the end of the dock, picked her up gently and tossed her into the deep end. She flailed a bit, choked down gulps of water, whimpered some, but figured out pretty quickly what she needed to do to keep from letting the lake swallow her right up. Grandpa Hugh walked along the dock just above her, calling out to her, saying her name, coaching her, cheering her on, guiding her along. She heard his voice between gulps and cries, and made her way, all gangly 4-year old arms and legs, to the shore. At the end of the "lesson", she was a swimmer. She didn't speak to him for two weeks, but she was a swimmer. She's held to a life-long love of the water ever since.
My own learn-to-swim story is a bit less dramatic. I've never really taken to the water. I took the mandatory swimming lessons with my third-grade class (suited up in a turquoise and white gingham-patterned one-piece with attached pleated skirt purchased at J.C. Penney). At the end of the two-week sessions scheduled in place of recess, I was awarded the "Best Floater" certificate. I wasn't aware until years later that this particular award is not something to which one would normally aspire. Turns out, chubby girls float.
I was thrown into the deep end myself a few months back. My boss was three weeks away from the start of maternity leave, and we had sketched out a tentative plan for how things would run while she was away, since most of what fills her inbox would fill mine. I had a basic idea of what it would take to keep things running smoothly, but I wanted, well, all kinds of direction and assurance, guidance and how-to-do's. We had a lunch date set for noon on a Thursday to strategize. I had my list of questions, the list I'd been mulling over for weeks, she'd have her list of answers. I had my list of concerns; she'd have her list of solutions. But little Isaac John, well, he had other plans, as babies often do. He decided to show up three weeks early. The boss and I never got to have that lunch. I walked into work on a Monday morning, was given the birth announcement, flopped into my chair for a second to grasp the news, and then felt the splash and the chill as me and my notes were tossed into the deep.
What followed were a few months of a wild ride on the learning curve. Things thrown at me I had no idea what to do with. Things found inside myself I never knew were there.
The boss is back, Isaac John is holding his head up on his own, my inbox is back to being simply mine and manageable. Sure, there was a little flailing, a little gulping, a few whimpers. But I learned how to swim.
When my mom tells her story, she assures me that Pa wasn't mean, that his method, while, perhaps a tiny bit misguided, was never meant to scare her, never meant to hurt her. Pa just knew it was time for her to learn the lake and he figured that a toss off the dock was as good a choice as any.
This walk of faith sometimes feels like a toss into the deep end. There are moments where it seems we're not on dry ground, we realize we're running out of dock, and before we know what's happening, things feel dark, deep, overwhelming, and footing is hard to find. Like that 4-year old girl at her first swimming lesson, we feel like, gee, a little warning would have been nice. Like me and my list of questions for the boss, we want to know exactly what to do in every eventuality. But this life of faith can't be decided upon only once we're satisfied that we have all the answers to all the questions. Faith is often lived in the questions... questions like, "what do I do now?", "how am I going to make it through this?", "are You here?"
This life of faith, its more like holding on to Grandpa Hugh's hand as we walk along the dock, looking into his gentle eyes with a mix of excitement and uncertainty as he loosens the life vest, feeling the strength of his arms as he cradles us close, and hearing his voice as he calls out to us in the deep: "c'mon sweetheart, I see you, I'm right here, you can do it, don't be afraid, just come to me."
Billy Crockett, a singer-songwriter whose music has kept me good company for years, writes, "the depth of God's love, reaches down, down down, to where we are, until we're found, found, found. Through quiet words, or none at all, He pursues our hearts behind the wall, and to those who wait with darkness all around, the depth of God's love reaches down."
"I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord. "My plans are to prosper you and not to harm you, to give you a future, to give you hope." ~ Jeremiah 29:11.
You pray, you cry, you swallow a little bit of lake. You believe that the arms and the love that dropped you into the deep will gather you up again.
