Freedom from floaties

The girls and I spent the afternoon at my parents' neighborhood pool. My mom was watching my niece and nephew and we thought it would be fun to get them all together.

This pool, mind you, is no ordinary neighborhood pool. It has an enormous slide, kid's play area, dumping buckets, slides, sprinklers, guns, basketball nets (in the pool), and many other amenities.

We had a great time.

Ava, who is four years old, is very interested in swimming. She has had no formal lessons, but she is willing to try and wants desperately to do it. She feels pretty confident in the shallow end, but the deep end always makes her ask for her "floaties".

She watched other children swim around in the deep water and she came and asked me if she could remove her floaties. I told her "no". She persisted in asking me several more times...so I relented and told her that she could remove them only to practice swimming to me.

She was very excited to do this.

She stood on the steps and told me to back up about 8 paces from her...and here she came.

I did nothing but stand there.

She just did it!!

I was amazed, shocked, and so proud. She was too!!
She repeated this over and over....until she saw a little girl turning flips under the water.

She said, "Mama, I want to do that".

I said, "O.k., I'll show you how."

Too late....she was already attempting it on her own. She didn't quite make it all the way around the first time, but she did it again and again and again.

Then, as if looking for something bigger and better, she started attempting back flips under water.

(Are you kidding me?? She had just been wearing floaties 15 minutes earlier?? Now she looked so at ease in the water....I was baffled. I had just witnessed her "getting it". She learned to swim right in front of me...on her own...and it was a beautiful sight.)

I couldn't help but just stand right beside her in the water and grin like any other goofy proud parent. I hadn't really done anything except...be there.

I was there to smile really BIG when she came out of the water.

I was there to offer her my body as something she could grab whenever she needed to.

I was just there to witness a BIG milestone for my little girl.

As I held her...I asked the Lord to help me remember each detail about this experience. It was so special.

She couldn't wait to tell everyone about her swimming...WITHOUT floaties. Her jumps, turns, twists, and flips were amazing to even her.

The Lord spoke to me even through this encounter...

-Ava had been convinced that she couldn't handle the water without her floaties. She feared the water. She knew the floaties would hold her up. However, she couldn't possibly enjoy the fullness of the pool with those floaties on. She couldn't flip, twist, or glide under the surface. She couldn't explore all that the pool offered. The floaties did just what they were designed to do....keep her afloat. They kept her head above water....

-Is that how I live my Christian life?? Do I walk around with my "safe" floaties on. Christ beckons us to take them off...to enjoy the fullness of this life experience. Instead we let our floaties immobilize us to the surface.

We miss out on the freedom of the water underneath...how it feels to do the twists and flips.

The sweet thing is Jesus knows we are a little freaked to learn to do this...so just like the doting parent...He is there. He is available to encourage us when we come up for air, he applauds us when we risk and learn to do new things, and he is accessible to grab when we feel we might be trapped below the surface.

I didn't mean to get super-spiritual but that is how God speaks to me. He uses my ordinary daily things to show me how He feels about me. I thought this one happened to be pretty special.

I knew how it felt to watch Ava learn, risk, and accomplish something she had feared. I was proud and excited for her in a big way.

I think the Lord, our daddy, delights in watching us do similar things.

He is currently watching me walk in the freedom from a fear that I have long battled. I can almost sense His giddiness as He watches me have victory. Isn't that why He died...

for freedom.

I believe nothing makes him happier than to see one of His babies take off their floaties of fear and enjoy freedom to the fullest!!