On the High Dive in My Red Polka Dot Swimsuit

Christine Wright inspired me in her blog post, Living Joel 2:25: Just Like Before (But With a Cuter Swimsuit).  I was responding to her in the comment section,  and I realized that what she wrote resonated so deeply, that what I was doing was writing a blog post.  So I hope you read this, Christine, and see how God spoke to me through your God-sized dream.

Wearing a red polka dot two-piece swimsuit, not a bikini -- my mother would never have allowed it -- I climbed up the steps to the high-dive, because I wanted to know I could jump off a high dive.  With familiar dread I looked over the edge, afraid yet desiring to jump;  therefore, with the angst of a fourteen year old that did not want to fail in front of her peers, I jumped and belly-flopped.  With teenage nonchalance, I swam to the side of the pool, despite my pain.  Deep in the core of my being, I was thankful to be intact;  I was horribly embarrassed;  I was shaken; and I was jubilant:  because, I had faced my fear.  Thanks to Christine, I began to remember many jumps of faith in my life. 

One would think leaps of faith would get easier, but after having been tested and scarred, some things got harder.  When I was young, I had the naive, kind of open faith in which I believed that I would always be happy, as long as I was following God's will.  Because had been protected from the world in many ways, I saw God as my benevolent Father that would get me through anything.  The only thing is I did not really know how Anything can shake you to the core, where you are barely clinging to God the Father.  I thank Him for keeping me afloat when I felt like I was drowning and I would not survive.  I thank Him for the scriptures in the Bible that gave me glimpses of His radiance and filled me with hope.  Without God's hand holding me afloat, I would surely have sunk.

Memories, of the things that hurt so deeply in the past. still send  a pang of pain through my heart.  That is why I think it is unwise to linger in the past too long, especially when God has gently helped me back to the place where I have been making new leaps of faith.  Let's change that word from leaps to steps.  As a person who has several chronic illnesses, which significantly changed what I could do physically, He showed me in my quest that I needed to go back to my inner child, to remember how I began to walk, how I learned to be a fully functional person.  This was how I learned to take baby steps to living my life in a body that is not the same.

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart:  and ye shall find rest unto your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light  (KJV, Matthew 11:28-30).

Some people might say, "Why don't you ask God to heal you?"  I have, and I know that in time this will happen, whether here on this earth or in heaven.  Healing of my body is not the most important thing to me.  What is most important is my relationship with God, and whether I am following Him.  I have learned things through the difficulties of life, that I would have learned no other way.  Rather than my path having become smaller, I feel like 

God has enlarged my path by teaching me what I need to know to be who I am now.  By no means am I saying any of the pain I have experienced in life has come from God.  In fact, I would say that the bad things I have experienced were definitely Not from the Lord.  He has allowed me to be tested, to experience things I never dreamed of experiencing when I was young.  And praise be to God, I am happy and trusting Him.  Now.  Still trusting -- and wanting to trust with the faith of a child.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me... (NASB, Matthew 18:1-5)

"Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960,1962,1963,1968,1971,1972,1973,1975,1977,1995 by The Lockman Foundation. 
Used by permission."