Fish Outta Water!

If you read any part of the book I compiled last year, you would know that I teach swimming.

The child I currently teach, I did not ask for nor want, but his family is so sweet and so dang persistent that I couldn't say no.

And it's all good and fine except that this is my second summer with him and we're at the same place we were last summer.

No growth.

No change in abilities. In fact, there is actually a deprecation (I don't even care if I'm misusing that word actually) in his abilities and level of cooperation from last summer.

Every single thing we do, he starts in with the endless, "ButwhyIdontwannuuuuuuu!!!!" and "areyougonnaleave?!" and "butthatstoofarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr" and "butidon'tlikeunderwaterrrrrrr!"

It frazzles me.

And every week, we go over and over the fact that I have not ever once left him or let him go underwater on accident or been so far away that I wouldn't catch him when he jumps off the side.

It was yesterday, as I finally had to sit him on the side of the pool for 3 minutes as a time-out for just absolutely refusing to cooperate (pool time-outs worked on me always as a child), I realized, once again, just how much swim lessons are like learning to be a follower of Jesus.

He has never pushed me past what He ultimately knew I would be able to handle (through Him), and He has never left me even once. Do I still absolutely flip out? Yes. And I probably ask obnoxious questions in a whiny voice, too.

And sometimes, just like Kees, when I'm put in time-out, I'm very content to stay there and not go back in the water. [yeah! That's what happened! He wouldn't get back in! I should have made him stay in the water for a punnishment. pfft!].

When I'm in life timeout, which to a certain extent I am currently, it's hard to want to go back.  Or forward, rather.

Tulsa is a waiting place for me. It often has served as such. I'm in purgatory. Not Heaven, not Hell. Just...here. Biding my time between my life as a college student and my life as a postgraduate student.

I'm just a kid, and yet, I'm not a kid.

And I, like Kees, want, somewhere deep, deep, deep down to be an adult (or in his case, a swimmer), I just don't want to accept all the pieces that go along with it. Like letting go of my childhood home or my family or my position as "child" or the known of right now, even if it is purgatory. And he doesn't want to accept the having to go underwater part or the trusting the water part or the having to wear goggles part.

There is going to be collateral damage.

But if I don't embrace it, I'll be like that kid in floaties at the pool party sitting on the stairs.
I'll be the perpetual bridesmaid. I'll live with my parents. I'll never make forward motion.

If you aren't growing, if you aren't learning, then you're dying.
If I'm not ready to grow up, then I sure ain't ready to die.