Just Keep Swimming

Last week we were heading back from Iowa when we stopped in for the night at a hotel in the middle of Ohio. After 10 hours on the road with two young children, stopping for the night is a welcome relief. Getting to burn off some steam in the hotel pool is an absolute necessity when you are traveling across the country with a 3-year-old.  

We got all our gear unloaded, changed into our swimming stuff, and rocketed down the hallway, Asher barely able to contain his excitement. I went in, playing my this-water-is-freezing part like a 7-year-old girl (true-to-from), and Asher followed. 

Asher trusts me. I am not sure why, but he does. Innately and almost completely. I think it has to do with me loving him or something. Yet there is one place where no amount of assurance of safety will overcome his natural fears: water. I can be holding onto him, in three feet of water where he is able to stand on his own, and he will act as if we adrift in the North Atlantic with no land in sight. In short, he panics.  

This is coupled with a love of water and a desire to jump into any body of water He happens to come across. The result is he jumps with total joy, hits the water with glee, then promptly freaks out.  Also he doesn't have any idea what "hold your breath" means, so inevitably he comes up sputtering.  We definitely have work to do in the swimming department.  

He jumps, then panics.
When he hits the water, reality sets in.
He trusts me, but fears the water.

Our family is in the deep end.  With my mom's death, our move, and planting Hopesprings in Sioux City, we are feeling pretty overwhelmed.  Panic is a dangerous and soul-crushing thing, and it is not far from us.  We are like toddlers who don't realize our Dad is right there, and won't let anything happen to us.  Even if we come up sputtering, we will come up, and we will make it.  He is there, in the pool with us, with both feet on the ground, holding us.  Sometimes we flail and grasp and clutch and panic, not realizing safety is right here, that God is right here, that there is nothing to be afraid of.  

When He got into the boat, His disciples followed Him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being covered with the waves; but Jesus Himself was asleep. And they came to Him and woke Him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing!” He *said to them, “Why are you afraid, you men of little faith?” Then He got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and it became perfectly calm. The men were amazed, and said, “What kind of a man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?” 
-Matthew 8