swimming "lessons"

During the summers when my kids were little I would sign them up for swimming lessons. I loved having something to go do during those long lazy days of summer, but I also wanted every kid to go through enough weeks of lessons to make them good safe swimmers. So I just kept enrolling the younger ones, to ensure they had enough classes, but didn’t want to leave the older ones out, so all four kids took swimming lessons every summer. Probably a bit overkill, but when it comes to adventure, I’m not known for moderation. And since it was a pretty reasonable price, we did it year after year. We would pack some snacks or make a plan to stop for lunch, like at McDonalds or a park afterward or somewhere fun and turn swim lessons into an occasion. I just loved getting all the kids in the car and heading off to do something together. I still love that. But one particular memory of swimming lessons was of Jacob and Aaron. We always went to the Miller Swim School. The Miller family rented out different swimming facilities all around Tulsa and offered two-week classes. Mr. Miller was the patriarch of the family. He had served in the military, I think, and was a really cool guy with a lot of business smarts, but in the water you only saw the drill sergeant part of him. He wasn’t always there everyday, he let the women folk in his family teach the kids their swimming lessons. But on the day the parents were supposed to come in and observe, Mr. Miller always showed up in the pool, barking out orders and demanding compliance. Aaron did ok with Mr. Miller, because Aaron was very competitive and had a little tough guy exterior and wanted to please this man yelling at him. It just cracked me up that on the little kids swimming demonstration day, General Schwarzkopf would show up and try to whip all these little wet shivering kids into his swimming brigade. Don’t get me wrong, he was a good person and you could tell he liked kids, but Jacob didn’t do so well with the yelling. Jacob just wanted everyone to get along and be sweet to each other. He didn’t care necessarily about being the best swimmer as he did being the teachers favorite little guy. I remember once Mr. Miller shouting exclusively at Jacob, “C'mon boy, what are you doing? Get out there and swim like a man! Move, move, move!” I watched him endure it for a few minutes then saw him decide, “yeah, that’s enough of that”, and he started swimming to the side of the pool where I was. His little eyes were red, not with chlorine, but with tears he was trying to hold back. He put his hands on the edge of the pool and looked at me as if to say, “I can get out and stand by you mom, right?” I just looked at him with fearful eyes and shaking my head no and whispering, “no, no, stay in there, it’ll be over soon”. I used my hands to demonstrate, get back out there, quickly. I knew if he got out of the pool to stand by his mommy, the embarrassment would only intensify. Mr. Miller would call him out in front of everybody, loudly. Not in a mean sort of way but definitely in an embarrassing sort of way. I felt so bad, because I wanted to rescue him. I wanted to grab him out of that pool and wrap a warm towel around him and hold him on my lap and remind him I loved him and thought he was a great swimmer. But I knew getting out of the pool, would only make things worse for him and I knew the class wouldn’t last much longer and it would all be over soon. I also knew (and this is the part I hate) that he’d probably get a little better and a little tougher in the process if I didn’t rescue him. Ugh, sometimes I just hated those moments of deciding my kids would be better off enduring the pain. It broke my heart. I know that’s how God is with us. Waiting by the pool in his lawn chair knowing all He has to do is reach down his hand and pull us out of the water. But He also knows it’ll be over soon and we’ll be better having stuck it out, making it through the pain and humiliation. So there He sits, near the edge of the pool with your beach towel, maybe with a tear in his eye but for sure compassion in his heart. His endurance level and concept of time is different from ours, a fact I’m not always fond of, but a lesson I’m constantly learning. Cause the truth is, it’s not always about me and about this very moment, but about what God is doing in me so he can do something meaningful through me.