Lifting my face upward, the ripples of water glint and gleam
as the rays of sunlight push downward through more than 80’ of water to where I’m
at on the seafloor. While it’s
mesmerizing, I can’t survive on my own in this ecosystem. My body requires oxygen to live. Thankfully I have that all important air,
strapped onto a tank on my back, and for at least 45 minutes that trip I am
free to swim with the sharks, fish, lobsters, starfish and crabs; to explore a
whole new world. To swim through caverns
and turn a corner to see the edge of the reef wall drop into a sheer cliff hundreds
of feet deep. I quickly reach behind me
to grasp the hand of my husband, my dive partner. While holding his hand doesn’t change the
circumstances, it is a reassuring touch that I’m not alone in this world.
Did I wake up that morning and decide to just walk off the
back of a boat into the middle of the Caribbean? Of course not, I took classes,
and then practiced what I was taught, was tested on those skills and became a
certified SCUBA diver first. Breathing
underwater can be dangerous, and it doesn’t come naturally to some of us. There are many skills to be learned, and they
are taught in a confined, safe environment of a swimming pool with lifeguards
and experienced divers to lead the way.
Another interesting thing with diving is that you aren’t certified and
then good to go for the rest of your life.
If you don’t practice on a somewhat consistent basis what you’ve been
taught, then every three years or so you have to take a refresher course. Why?
Because diving involves many tiny choices, risks and decisions that
could easily be a matter of life and death.
And it isn’t only your skills that need upkeep, but equipment can rust
or clog, BCD’s can get holes, air tanks can get stale, hoses can lose pressure.
Divers get this. Truly we get it, and we
care because it is critical to our well-being.
But after a while you may begin to think you don’t need the
expert, the lifeguard, the boat captain.
No sir-ey. You’ve been diving for
years, and on an impulse you just hop on a jet ski and head as fast as you can
out to sea. You don’t have a buddy with
you. You don’t have your tools in case
of equipment malfunction. Heck you
didn’t even bother to check your gear at all!
Diving around, swimming with the fish, seeing the sights,
taking it all in you think what a joke that you never did this before. You just wasted your time rechecking the
equipment every time, it hasn’t failed before, so why would it now? And buddy
systems, who needs them? They just slowed you down and sometimes your buddy
kept you completely away from a new area you really wanted to explore and see
for yourself. This, now THIS is the
life, this is how it’s meant to be explored, and lived, with the thrill of reckless
abandon to do whatever you want with no hindrances.
But then, a chill comes over you, a shadow crosses by. You spin around trying to catch a glimpse,
but all you see is an eerie shadow circling just beyond the field of
visibility. As the sense of panic begins
to grow you start grasping at your gauges.
The water temp is dropping, your heart rate is increasing and you
realize that your air tank is dangerously close the red empty line. You gasp and as you do you hear a hissing
sound and bubbling, the sound of your regulator leaking. Now spinning and reeling around, you
desperately reach behind you for the dangling cord of your octopus. Only to remember you didn’t bother to bring a
back-up. Sadly you realize that you had
all the tools you needed all along, yet you chose to let them fall into a state
of disrepair. Your last chance is to make it to the surface. Fighting panic that urges you to swim upward
as fast as possible, to just get out the quickest way possible, to go home and
pretend this nightmare never happened, but you also know it would cause your
lungs to explode. So you decide to slowly get yourself up and out of this mess,
but in the midst of all the panic you can’t remember which way is up. Now while in training they set us up for that
scenario, and while we laughed in the pool with the rest of the class at the
thought of actually having no clue of which way is up and which way is down, I
do remember the instructor saying to just look for the bubbles. They are the proof and they always rise
upward. Within a few minutes, but what
feels like hours later, you finally break to the surface of the water and gasp
in that sweet, sweet fresh air.
So why does it seem so much harder in other life
circumstances to realize that the same concept applies? Why do we think the
rest of living we can do without training or help along the way? While I
wouldn’t go diving off a boat in the middle of the ocean without proper
training, certification and equipment all too often I do the equivalent by
impulsively rushing forward into some reckless source of excitement or
distraction or moment of pleasure. Then
a lifeguard comes along, drags you to the surface and offers to teach you the
tools you need to live a very full life, but within the confines of boundaries
God has given for our safety. You read the study books; start putting it into
practice, turn and share with others what you’ve learned. And slowly but surely you think you have it
down. You begin to think that maybe,
just perhaps, all the rules and boundaries are set for the newcomers, not for
you. You can handle the fun and
excitement without the hassle of the rules and regulations. Complacency sets in, sometimes followed by a sense
that you are missing out on something more, and that’s when the above scenario
starts to take place.
God’s Word is the truth and like the bubbles. No matter how confused we feel, when we can’t
seem to grasp what is up and what is down, His Word stays the same, always
pointing toward the Light, always rising upward. Sometimes we completely run out of air and
need a buddy to come along, to buddy breath with us and share some of their
oxygen until we can breathe on our own.
We have to rebuild our tool boxes, and sometimes that includes painfully
scraping off the rust, scrubbing the mold off and even at times ripping off old
dry rotted O-rings and replacing them with new ones. Friends come along like our gauges, and when
we don’t know which way we are headed they point us to the compass, they show
us when we are getting too close to the red danger line, they help us to keep
our tanks full with encouraging words, God’s Word and by sharing what they have
learned along the way. And just like
when I dove the wall in Cozumel and reached behind me for the comforting touch
of my husband’s hand, we need friends to simply be there and let us know we
will be ok.
I’ve been on diving training classes and there have been
divers that have been certified many years longer than myself but haven’t been
in a while so are re-taking the skills class.
Do they sit around moping because it’s been a while since they went
diving and now they need to repeat and practice their skills in a refresher
class? Do they hang their heads in shame that they are asking for the help of a
dive master when they themselves have been diving for so many years? Of course
not! They actually are leading the way and showing the rest of us that we are
never beyond needing others or updating our skills and the equipment that we
have. Showing that using the buddy system isn’t just for novices, but that
everyone needs a partner to stay safe. Then why oh why, as God is pointing out areas in my life
that I felt I could go at it alone but have failed, do I feel shame?
But right now, at this moment, I don’t. Instead I feel a very large sense of
gratitude that I am here, and that He is such a patient teacher, willing to
shape me and hone my skills into something of usefulness. That He is opening
doors and bringing new people into my life that are willing to tell me when my
compass is pointing the wrong direction or that my tank is running low. May I be humble enough to know life can’t be
lived solo, that I need others, that I need safety boundaries and humble enough
to ask for help when I think I’m drowning.
To remember that even when the BCD, air tank, regulator, weights, gauges, depth
rules, etc all may seem to weigh me down, that they are actually the keys to
freedom and exploring a world so much bigger than what I can see from the
surface or ever even imagine.
