Faith | Feel like you’re drowning? ‘Dog paddle’ to a new perspective

Hauser Lake in North Idaho looked huge through my eight-year-old eyes.

The crystal-clear water gave me a view from the edge of the dock down to the bottom. I could see sunfish swimming in tight, seemingly-choreographed schools below the surface, with blue, green, and orange shimmering off their sides.

The dock was long and rickety. Three older, bigger boys jostled about, daring one another to jump into the cold lake water. At that moment, they stood between me and my curious desire to see the view off the end of the dock—what the boys were calling the “deep end.”

As I inched closer to the edge of the dock to move past the boys, one of them turned and said, “Hey, you gonna jump in?”

Before I could tell him I didn’t know how to swim well, he pushed me off the dock and into the water with a sudden shove. I sank like a rock in five or six feet of water.

This experience, however, terrifying as it was, became a transformative moment in my life.

I remember struggling—fighting and flailing to reach the surface. With icy water blocking my airway, I was choking, gagging and very frightened.

Did you know that there are no less than eight Bible verses that describe drowning and the fear of drowning or water?

I think of Moses leading Israel through the Red Sea in Exodus 14—and the unfortunate Egyptian charioteers, pursuing from behind. I think of Matthew 8, and the shouts of Jesus’ disciples, trying to wake him in the midst of a fierce, devilish storm on the Sea of Galilee. “Don’t you care that we perish?!”

But my favorite is Jonah. The reluctant prophet of God wasn’t pushed off a dock into a placid lake, he was flung—chucked, hurled—by a terrified crew into a raging Mediterranean storm.

Did he sink like a rock? Probably. But not very far.

Imagine his terror when he found himself descending into the maw of a monstrous fish. The word picture that comes to mind is that God gave Jonah a personal fish-shaped prayer closet. And boy, did Jonah pray. (Jonah 2)

It is breathtaking how a plunge into deep water can adjust one’s perspective and attitude.

God spoke to the fish, and the creature obediently deposited a thankful Jonah on the very shoreline of his mission—and his second chance to obey and serve the Lord.

Water in scripture is a metaphor for chaos. I’m sure that’s what Jonah felt, and I still vividly remember the chaotic fear I experienced when that boy shoved me off the dock.

Earlier that summer, my uncle and I had watched his dog swimming. “You can swim like that, too,” he told me. “It’s called dog paddling.”

He made motions with his hands cupped, rotating them to mimic a dog paddling through the water.

Somehow, in the moment, I flailed the dog’s paddling motion, mostly thrashing, as the boys stood on the dock, entertained by my antics—until my dad ran into the lake and pulled me ashore.

The boys scurried off like a pack of wolves.

I don’t know if Jonah took swimming lessons after being tossed into the deep end, but I made it a point to learn all I could after my plunge with the sunfish.

What can we say about storms, chaotic waters and plunging down (sometimes into the cold, deep end of things) into breathtaking and unexpected life circumstances?

First of all, I recommend you learn how to swim—or even dog paddle.

But most of all, remember what the Lord promises:

“When you’re in over your head, I’ll be there with you.

When you’re in rough waters, you will not go down.”

(Isaiah 43:2, MSG)