Dive Story: A Parable of Sorts

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.