Loading...When I was a young boy, summertime meant Little League baseball, collecting fireflies, warm evenings playing kick-the-can while running through neighborhood yards free of fences, the luxury of an electric fan at the foot of bed, and listening to a ball game on the radio or reading as late as you wanted (or could get away with). And of course, summer meant swimming.
Our community pool was a nice one, small by today's water park standards, but usually there was plenty of room for everyone. If it was too hot for baseball we headed to the pool and enjoyed Top 40 tunes from everyone's favorite station, WLS-AM Chicago, blaring through the loud speakers. Red Cross swimming lessons started at 10 a.m., which meant that only on the hottest days of the year did the water feel even close to comfortable.
In my third summer of lessons, I was horsing around with friends after our first session, slipped in the gravel parking lot, and received a deep cut on my knee, which required several stitches. Dr. Couchman did a fine job patching me up. I especially liked when, after deadening the area around the wound, he took what looked to be a wire brush and began to clean the wound by scrubbing with great force. I didn't feel a thing, but evidently my mother did, for at one point the doctor gently helped her off the exam room floor and back into her seat. As the last stitch was tied, he uttered terrible words: no swimming for six weeks. And the start of school was exactly six weeks away. That meant for the rest of the summer, no cool dip on a hot day, no games of pool freeze-tag or our own version of water-polo, and no swimming lessons.
The next summer, to make up for the lessons I missed, I took private lessons, which started at 9 a.m. when the water could have chilled a soda can to perfection in five minutes. My instructor seemed not so much interested in me as she was in a few of the other guards—college football players—who were only too happy to return the attention.
At each lesson I was told to swim twenty laps while she talked with Hank and Dirk. As the flirt-fest carried on, I alternated strokes every few laps: crawl, back, side, etc. Thus, in just a few weeks, I caught up on what I had missed the previous summer and was told that I was now ready for the next level of instruction. How nonchalant was my teacher when she said that to successfully complete the next level I would not only need to swim so many laps using various strokes, but that I would also have to dive off of the high dive.
Dive?! Off the HIGH dive?! Devil woman!
Now according to the sign at the bottom of the platform, the high dive was 18 feet high. Not true. It was 60 feet if it was an inch, and I was doomed. For several weeks I dreaded the upcoming dive, and I mean, dreaded. I was a fair swimmer, and if the Olympic Games awarded medals for floating, I would have made America proud.
But diving was not my thing. (I'm sure it was because of an undiagnosed inner ear condition that made it physically impossible for my head to enter the water ahead of stomach.) From the low board, on the few occasions I had attempted to dive, the results of my efforts had displaced too much water to calculate. This talent today would earn me the nickname 'Tsunami Terry.' And from the looks of my tummy following such a dive, you would have thought that I had just landed in a field of very ripe strawberries.
But worst of all was the sound: WHAAAPPP! It was the kind of sound that caused everyone to turn and seek out the source. I knew I couldn't dive, but why did everyone within a country mile have to know it, too? And that was from the low dive, a mere 4 inches above the surface. What chance did I have from 60 feet—no, make that, 80 feet above?
Those wonderful summer carefree summer days and nights became a countdown to THE DIVE. I couldn't get my fears out of my mind. I devoted much energy to concocting excuses, and I fervently prayed The Noah Prayer, beseeching heaven to send down forty days and forty nights of rain. But it was all to no avail. Slowly, painfully, the day approached, and finally arrived.
Into the locker room I went, certain of the Custer-like fate awaiting me. I completed the laps using all the required strokes though I was hardly paying attention to my form. Luckily, my instructor was locked in a philosophical discussion with Hank and Dirk, so I was given credit for each part of the exam. It was then that I began to fantasize: perhaps if I did incredibly well on parts 1 thru 7 surely I could just skip part 8 – THE DIVE! With the hope of the condemned awaiting a gubernatorial reprieve, I approached my instructor and executioner. In mid-discussion with Hank and Dirk, without even looking my way or speaking to me ... she pointed to the high dive.
As I ascended the ladder I had never felt so alone. When I reached the platform, I saw that I was not alone and beheld a crowd of what seemed like 500, all eager to witness my attempt.
I looked to the heavens – not a cloud in the sky. I looked down to the pool – was the water being drained? I had never known such fear, and I had never before felt so absolutely sure that there was no way out but to dive off the board. I was scared stiff, which is not exactly text-book diving posture.
What took place in the few seconds that followed are mostly a blur. It took only a moment to cover the 120 feet from the diving board to the water below. And ...
... if it is true that sound waves never die, some life form in some far distant galaxy monitoring sounds from deep space will one day risk hearing loss if the sound of my spectacular belly flop is detected, followed by an equally amazing scream that caused those gathered around the pool to cover their ears ... even though I was still underwater.
Summer is a time for relaxation, play, vacation, and re-creation. But summer is also time for belly flops – trying things we aren't good at or have never tried, a time to clumsily face a deep-seated fear, a time to hold nothing back and dive off the proverbial high dive. Summer is a time to discover, perhaps for the first time, or rediscover, that God is not only in our triumphs, successes, and in times of calm, but God is also in the worry, at the end of the board, in the alleged dive that is really a free fall, and in the deep water. And God is very definitely in the Dairy Queen Hot Fudge Brownie Delight with extra whipped cream and nuts that only the world's most spectacular belly floppers, fresh from a 150-foot high dive, can truly appreciate!
Take a dive this summer.
With my love in Christ,
+Terry
