The pool opened early Monday morning for my nine o’clock Beginner’s Swimming class. I spent the weekend biting my nails in angst over what I knew I had to do that Monday—jump into the deep end of the pool in order to pass swimming.
But I was a wimp.
I watched as my classmates ahead of me flew off the diving board, plunged hundreds of feet deep (okay, not hundreds, but it looked like hundreds of feet) and floated up to the surface. They didn’t flinch.
This wasn’t the case for me. I trailed the end of the line and mentally concocted ways to shirk this mandatory (and, in my 21 year old opinion, crazy) graduation requirement. To graduate from the college I had poured years of labor into, I had to not only read the Great Books…but swim?
My fearless best friend passed the swim test our first week in freshman year. As a freshman, I didn’t know how to swim, and I didn’t want to learn. Give me a fifty page paper to write in Spanish and I could do it. Drown me in a sea of books to read, and I could fly through them and give you a point by point analysis of each. But swim? Never.
So I avoided this requirement until the last possible moment: spring semester my senior year.
The line shortened. I bent my knees and pretended to rev up for the big plunge.
Bend, straighten. Bend, straighten.
After a couple of bends, I was shot.
“Edwards. You’re up.” (Edwards is my maiden name.)
My swim teacher, five feet four and super athletic, reminded me of the Catholic school nuns from my high school. He didn’t hesitate to penalize me for my flinches, hesitations and missteps.
But I couldn’t do it. I stepped away from the diving board.
“Edwards. If you don’t jump, I’ll flunk you.”
Flunk. The word dangled in front of me as anathema, pure heresy. Don’t know why. I had flunked many classes during my prodigal daughter years. But when I had flunked in the past, it was due to jadedness. Jaded people were numb people, didn’t care either way.
If I flunked now, it would be due to fear. Fearful people absorbed the full brunt of life’s bee stings and beneath that fatty layer of fear, they cared.
My heart crumbled. I wanted to jump. I really, really did.
“Edwards. You’re not going to drown. If you drown, I’ll catch you.”
You’re not going to drown…If you drown…
Sounded like an oxymoron to me.
Moments later, I stepped onto the board. My heart stuttered but I was more determined this time. I bent my knees and straightened.
Bend.
Straighten.
Bend.
Straighten.
Bend!
“Edwards!!”
With one blind motion, I flung my one hundred and fifteen pound body from the board. As I fell, cold air sliced through me. Then a shock of water swaddled me. I stiffened and inhaled the H2O.
Hold your breath.
I listened to that Voice and my body relaxed. Soon after, the water which I had feared would kill me, carried me.
Carried me back to the surface.
“Nice job, Edwards.”
My Spartan swim teacher paid me a compliment? I smiled.
Weeks later I received my shiny new Bachelor’s degree written in fancy Latin.
Here’s the thing: people jump off of diving boards every day and no one cares.
It wasn’t until someone hesitated, someone like me, that others got involved. Those others may laugh at you, cheer for you, or threaten academic failure.
I am standing on the edge of the diving board again and staring at a blank journal waiting to be filled with…
I won’t know until I take the proverbial plunge.
Oh sure, I can hold on to the highs and lows of past years: 2013, 2012, 2011, 201o, etc. But that would be chicken. And it’s the dawning of a new day.
A time to push through insecurities and face my fears.
Fears about being a good enough mom.
Fears about being a good enough writer.
Fears about being a good enough me.
Bend, straighten.
Bend, straighten.
Bend, jump!
I hope you push through your insecurity and fully face your fear. Because there’s a still small Voice waiting to guide you, and comforting waters ready to carry you…
If you jump.
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