Depth has been at the heart of God’s lessons this week, so I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when He reminded me of the time daddy threw me into the deep end of an ice cold swimming pool. I smiled as I recalled that image this morning, but there was nothing funny about it when it happened.
I was almost ten years old, and we were visiting my aunt and uncle who lived in a small cabin nestled in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. Aunt Edith and Uncle Dave had no electricity or running water, so they had an outhouse instead of a bathroom. I didn’t know Uncle Dave was a wealthy man until after he died. Aunt Edith didn’t know they had money either. When she realized she had over a million dollars, her response was, “I don’t care what anybody says, I’m buying a washer and a dryer!!” She was as sweet and innocent as Dave was mean and spiteful. She ended up sharing her money with all of her sisters and brothers because she believed it to be the right thing to do. I could just imagine Uncle Dave flipping over in his grave!
Uncle Dave didn’t spend money on anything but land, and he bought a lot of it. One of his properties was a hunting lodge with a pool. Daddy and Dave took my sisters and I over for a swim during one of our visits. I didn’t realize it belonged to my uncle. I figured he either knew the person who owned the house or was simply trespassing. The lodge was deep in the woods, and the pool was not heated. The water had to be sixty degrees or less on that cool fall afternoon.
I’m not sure why daddy threw me into the deep end of that pool, but it was probably because he wanted to teach me how to swim. Daddy and Uncle Dave enjoyed drinking white lightning when they got together, and I’m sure they dipped into Dave’s stash while we were at the lodge. Whatever the catalyst, I found myself suddenly catapulted through the air and submerged in an unwelcome icy bath.
Choking and splashing, I thrashed the water violently until I reached the side of the pool. I got out shivering in shock while trying to figure out what had just happened. I was used to trying to figure out what I had done after being beaten or drop kicked across a room, but daddy hadn’t hit me since I went into the lake and almost drowned at five.
The cold water brought back memories of a different time when the muddy water of Lake Hickory drew me under and almost ended my life. I walked willingly into that warm water and hadn’t struggled at all. Daddy jumped in and jerked me out of the water then, so why in God’s name had he so mercilessly thrown me into the deep end of this frigid pool.
I got my answer when I surfaced and saw Uncle Dave and daddy laughing out loud. Dave may have told daddy to throw me in, or daddy may have come up the teaching strategy on his own. Either way, I learned to swim that day. The crash course worked, and I swam in survival mode for the next fifty years. When I moved in with my son and his family a few years ago, the house came with a beautiful pool. I learned to relax and swim, even in the deep end, because I didn’t want my fear the water to become my granddaughters’ fear.
Last month, I relaxed and let the warm, soothing salt water lift my body and my spirits as I swam with abandon in my sister’s beautiful pool. Relaxing works wonders when it comes to swimming, and it’s also great when it comes to loving as God desires. I’m learning the more I relax, the deeper I can go đ
journeywithgigi 