The other side of fear

Having endured the, “just throw her off the dock and she will learn to swim,” philosophy of child rearing, my fear of water became deeply ingrained after being forced to “walk the plank” on a family camping trip.

The lake into which I was tossed, inaccurately named Clear Lake, was in fact a shallow, crappie filled lake which, in summer heat, resulted in a fair number of dead fish floating on the surface. That fateful day when forced off the dock and into the tepid water, upon surfacing I noticed a young boy picking up the chant of the children on shore. “Look at all the dead fish….look at all the dead fish.”

He turned toward me in the brightly colored inner tube and continued his chant. It was not until he was fully turned that I noticed the milky, unfocused, eyes. He was blind.

From that moment on, panic settled in my veins when around water.

It exploded at odd times. Once on Lake Chelan, seeing the clear water and telling myself nothing bad was in the water, I attempted water skiing. When I fell and had to wait for the boat, screams engulfed every fiber of my being, and when I was finally pulled in, I was swallowed in paroxysms of uncontrollable sobbing. When fear finally settled down, embarrassment rushed in to take its place.

That memory made it difficult to consider a family trip to Hawaii, but the family seemed excited, so I reasoned the clear water would make it okay. The first day, as the rest of the family dove in. I stood on shore, bile rising in my throat with shame as a chaser.

Left to my own devices on shore, I put my toes in the water and practiced deep breathing until my heart rate settled down. Then another inch deep and breathing. Then another and another. Gradually, I was up to my knees…still breathing and still fearful.

But I was in.

Each trip to the islands, I repeated the ritual, but made it a little further until I was able to snorkel. Always tethered to a body board “just in case”, Tim had to swim next to me holding my hand. The next trip it became okay to just hold his shirt as we swam side by side. Then perhaps just a foot or so away.

One summer at Waimea Bay during calm waters, I started out next to Tim, as was my ritual, so I could feel safe. But a flicker of movement caught my eye as a sea turtle swam below me near the bottom of the sandy sea. Transfixed, I began to slowly follow, noting how the flippers cut through the current and how the sun shafts slipping through the water made plaid patterns of light on the shell.

Feeling tired, I came up to clear my mask, and when I turned towards shore, an awful realization hit me. Tim was nowhere to be found, and I could see the shore a considerable distance away. Old familiar feelings began to creep up my throat, stalking me with crippling memories and promises of dangers in the deep.

Breathe deep…breathe deep.

Somewhere in the middle of my breathing, my whole body relaxed. I let my legs hang loose in the deep waters as I soaked in the view of families in the distance on shore. Tim’s form could be seen far ahead snorkeling around a rock, set free from the tyranny of my fear. And a new emotion enveloped me.

I was free.

Free of the paralysis of old memories.

Free of the fear of the unknown.

Free of my inability to find a clear path to joy.

There is an old saying in spiritual circles that you keep moving through doors until God closes one. But my fear of water taught me a different lesson. Sometimes the door that starts to close has a large name plate that reads, FEAR, and sometimes we need to stick our foot in that closing door and walk through anyway.

Monsters were not waiting to devour me in the sea.

Beauty was waiting to engulf my spirit and expand my soul.

And, as I have been discovering, the rest of my fears have contained the same promise.

Read the instructions

While living in the verdant Northwest, I often reflected on how my garden design was determined by what the garden wanted itself to be. I would study the exposed massive fir tree root to discern where the white rocks that had traveled in our pockets from the shores of Deception Pass should be placed. Perhaps the moss was better served here. Perhaps the trailing vine desired a hillside view.

Water was ever present, and sun in short supply, so adopting plants and placing them in nooks and crannies that best seemed to “suit their personalities” was an easy task. Nearly every plant label said, “partial shade” and “moderate water needs”.

Not so the desert, where water is scarce and sun is plentiful. It has taken a full year of watching the sun’s travels across the yard and noting the length of shadows through the day before I have dared to start planting.

Because of the harsh desert conditions, I have become a student of planting instructions hoping to give these new garden additions their best chance of success in this often unforgiving landscape. How much water? How much sun? How long before they grow and produce fruit and flowers? When do they need to be pruned?

This morning, as I studied how water trickled over stone so as to determine the direction of the flow and the best place to plant, I wondered if we might not be a kinder, gentler world if we all took time to read each other’s planting instructions. To take the time to learn what would help each of us not just grow, but thrive, especially when it comes to our spiritual lives.

As a victim of not having people read my “spiritual planting instructions” until I was 46 years old, I was led to believe there was an “us” (the saved who walked with God) and a “them” (the “lost” who did not walk with God).

The problem is, it’s incomplete theology.

I say this to the those well intentioned “found” who tried to “save me” in the course of my life but only kept me from embracing my One True Love:

I was never lost.

God knew exactly where I was. And He never left my side, even in my darkest hours. Even when I doubted Him and pushed Him away. He knew my planting instructions because he created them, unique to me. He knew what I needed and gave me time to grow until my heart was ready for more.

To suggest that any of us might not be walking with God seems to defy the nature and character of God. None of us can ever be out of sight of our Creator. None of us can ever free ourselves of his relentless love. Even if we tried to get lost, He would drop everything just to bring us close to His side again.

Before my heart was ready for the full faith story, I experienced our Creator deeply in nature. In creation, I experienced the grandeur, the creative orderliness, and the deep love of the Creator revealed in the song of every brook, the whisper of every breeze, and the haunting notes of every bird of the forest..

But while God was patiently revealing himself to me, the humans around me engaged in “ambush evangelism” on on street corners, in school hallways, and in the every corner of my daily life. And that cacophony was a stumbling block for decades, drowning out the still, small voice of a loving Creator. Only in creation could I hear my maker’s voice above the noise.

Perhaps hearing. “the good news” shouted out of context in our already noisy, complex world does not sound like good news to some of us. Perhaps assuming there is somewhere God is not is the worst of all misassumptions. Perhaps it is “the found” who could benefit from a long fast from words while sitting in the Holy deafening silence of a God soaked world in which the human voice is not needed.

Everyone of us is seeking to be placed in an environment that suits our nature…one where we can grow at our own speed supported lovingly by the careful Gardener who tills the soil to ready our hearts for a more complete story.

It is a transformation that will unfold on a time table set by the Gardener’s hands and one that will not be rushed by the intrusion of human desire, no matter how well intentioned.

In the sacred waiting, His song over my life, was sung in the wind’s whispers through clattering aspen, through every sunrise and every sunset, through the love songs from the mouths of birds wrapping themselves around our hearts singing,

I have summoned you by name; you are mine.

It is a song the Creator sings over all of us, every day, preparing the soil of our hearts like the tender gardener He is. Let His work be done according to His will, and then be released from that burden so as to follow the one instruction common to us all, whether “lost” or “found”.

It is simply this:

To love our Creator.

To love others.

And to love our neighbor at least as much as we love ourselves. Perhaps even more,

In that soil, all of us will flourish, growing ever closer to our own embrace of the Master Gardener as we are called to Everlasting Love.

Small things

It is a small thing. His father had asked his middle aged son months ago if he would care for mom should anything happen to him. His son says yes without question, knowing his dad will be around for a long while.

A few months later, his father dies, and his son moves into his mother’s home in Arizona to care for her in this time of transition. We would not have met, but he now walks his mother’s dog to the corner house each night at 6:15 where his mother’s friends gather with their puppies and have a time of connection.

It is a corner past which we also walk our dog each night, not stopping as the group is boisterous, and our dog is not. But today, they are late, and we are able to meet and hear his story. I ask him how long he thinks he will be here.

For the rest of my life.

He has moved, lock, stock and barrel, to this desert place, leaving behind his life in Oregon to keep his promise to his father and honor his mother. He will remain until she passes, and then, he imagines, this will be his home now…

And it is another small thing. The young man stocking shelves in the early morning moves his carts to make room for me in the frozen food aisle.

“You didn’t need to do that…I can walk around you.”

It is the least I can do, he says.

As it is 6 am, I feel a need to explain that the ice cream is for my husband and that since they replaced his main artery that was hardened into concrete, he probably has a few more happy years of ice cream for breakfast.

My mother had heart surgery too, he says.

And then he goes on to explain about her childhood struggles with rheumatic fever and her knee surgery and how much he loves his familia. Life has not been an easy journey. He worries his mother is not getting the best care. But at some point, he fixes his gaze on me, kisses the cross around his neck, points skyward and says,

God has watched over us. We are blessed.

We pass each other later on near the donut aisle, because, well, what goes better with ice cream than a maple bar? Our gazes meet, and I stop him to say how much I enjoyed our conversation. He points skyward again.

May God bless you, he says…

And it is another small thing. The man who is replacing my pavers keeps coming to me to ask my opinion about design. Every time my answer is the same.

“Jose, I know nothing about pavers. You can do what you think is best.”

He continues to ask, and I continue to decline. At one point he says he believes large rocks would be a good anchor for the patio design.

“Jose, I know nothing about pavers. You can do what you think is best.”

I watch as he meticulously cuts around these beautiful, hand selected stones. It adds hours to his work. When he is done, I ask him the new estimate, since these stones have added to his cost for materials, time, and labor. He says the stones cost $300. and he would add that to the bill.

“How much is the added labor?”

Nothing, he says.

We are, of course, unsatisfied with that answer and calculate on our own, as we have watched him labor each day in the heat. One day he apologizes for leaving “early” and only putting in an eight hour day instead of his normal 10-12 because he is needed for an event with his familia.

Through the heat, through the back breaking work, through a broken hand just now healing, he labors each day not for what he can gain, though of course that is important. He labors, I think, because of his love for creating careful beauty in the lives of others. It is a legacy he leaves behind with every nuanced cut of stone.

Small things.

Each moment has been a glimpse through a window of a life marked by love. Not the kind of “love” that screams from street corners or demands headlines. Not the kind of “love” that has entrance requirements.

No, this is love as a small thing. A love that is expressed in daily moments… a son’s promise to his father in a quiet conversation…a young man’s loving concern for his familia…a workman’s love of art expressed through humble service to his craft.

These small things,

done with great love,

marked by sacrifice

and soaked in blessing.