Fear

Well... some people may know that I work as a swimming instructor, particularly for Learn-to-Swim... and so I deal with lots of kids, young and old, and there is one thing that really gets you thinking... and that is fear... Some kids are petrified of the water to an irrational level... and they will make your eardrums bleed and quite literally temporarily deafen you for a minute or two if they go off close enough to your ear... some kids are so scared that they stiffen up like a rock and whatever potential that they had to swim would be lost as they would just sink to the bottom and then get even more scared... some older kids that are just learning how to swim will keep saying... "I can't, I can't, I can't do it"... even on the simplest of techniques... like simply relaxing and lying on your back in the water and kicking...

What is interesting is that it the reason for that kind of behaviour is because of some kind of precieved outcome that they think will happen if they enter the water or if they attempt a particular technique... but the thing is that if they trusted the fact that the instructor would not get them to do something that they couldn't do without providing all the necessary assistance required, then they would all be able to learn to swim easily and extremely quickly. But to trust someone also means putting faith in their promises for action. Trusting that when the instructor says "I will catch you", that he will indeed catch you when you push off and swim out to him. The fear creates a sort of stubbornness that is in my opinion unequalled in anyway. A 10 year old boy today was in a class that I was taking and the other kids were several years younger... the other 2 children must've been about 6-7ish? and the other children when I said "OK, we are gonna go kicking on our back." and one of the kids would not even need to wait for my hand to be placed on their back before pushing off towards me. However the 10 year old kid would be telling me "I can't do it, I can't do it"... and even when I'm basically carrying him in the water on his back, he would still be as stiff as a rock and could not even let go of my arm to hold onto a kickboard with both hands just because I said I needed both hands on his back to hold him up (I had one hand on his back, one hand on his chest and his head was on my shoulder). But I knew that he could have done it, because every human being is capable of swimming, and swimming is incredibly easy... One time at school, some inspirational media people came in and showed us a video, and a section of the video was about a guy born with no limbs and only had one foot which was attached to his hip and it had 3 toes... and that guy COULD SWIM BY HIMSELF... now if someone with no arms and no legs could swim by himself... I'm pretty sure any able minded human can swim... The reason why that guy with no limbs could swim was because he believed he could do it... and trusted whoever taught him how to swim enough to actually give it a shot without holding back.

As a christian, I think that this very situation also applies in all of our lives as well. Life isn't a walk in the park, and we all have times when we think that we can't make it or there isn't a way to do something. But if we just trust that God knows what he is doing and that if we believe in him and give it everything we have then we will get through those troubled times and we will learn and grow so much. I'm sure my students do not know how the various exercise will actually result in them learning how to swim, as they always say, "but I want to do this" or "But I can do that already" or "but I'm not good at that". They don't understand that it is not about the drills but about the outcome that the drills produce and they don't understand the 'plan' that we use to create the final outcome, which is when they can swim properly. Likewise, we will probably not understand the processes and the ways that God will use to bring out the things that he has planted in us. And we also don't always understand why certain things happen to us but if we just trust that God knows what he's doing and that we are in more than good hands then we can deal with those bad times with confidence.

All in a day's work