Go do it!

Jamie Ranson
Reprinted from the March 14, 2005, issue of the CS Sentinel.

Swim practice is going badly for this student — until he takes a deeper spiritual dive and finds buoyancy in God’s care.

I was having a terrible practice. Coach had rearranged the lanes so that I was swimming several sets with teammates who were much faster than I, and I was falling farther and farther behind. I was pushing myself hard-my arms, legs and lungs all seemed on fire-but I just couldn’t seem to keep up, or even catch a good breath.

While I knew that I could turn to God for help, it seemed that fighting through the pain and frustration was taking so much energy that I couldn’t think about anything else.

Then, just when I thought the practice couldn’t get any worse, it did. About halfway through the set, one of my teammates pushed off the wall just as I was swimming into it. He was swimming butterfly to my freestyle, and as I took a stroke into the wall, I felt his arm crash down onto my wrist. Immediately, the pain I was feeling already seemed to double, and I just wanted to get out of the pool and cry.

I let go of everything and asked God for help.

Instead, I clung to the wall, trying desperately to pray. Later, I remembered more of what I did at that moment. I let go of everything that had been running through my head-every bit of pride, shame, pain or exhaustion-and tearfully asked God to help me.

As I was doing this, the teammate who had inadvertently hit my arm came over to apologize. He asked if I was OK and if I was ready to swim the next part of the set. My first thought was to say no, that I just couldn’t do any more. But, surprisingly, before I could even form those thoughts into words, I found myself nodding to him.

“Yes. I’m fine. Let’s go.” I was completely flabbergasted at what I’d just heard myself say. Yet before I could think any differently, I was pushing off the wall again behind him.

It still hurt a lot. But this time something in me was saying, “This is right. Go do it.” I realized that this was the answer to my prayer, and I felt an incredible peace-a calm, strong outpouring of reassurance that filled my entire being. And as I kept swimming, I found myself paying very little attention to the pain in my wrist that had seemed so palpable a few moments before.

I realized all the pain had stopped.

After about 150 yards of swimming, I became aware that I had stopped crying. After another 100, I noticed that my wrist didn’t hurt any more at all, and neither did anything else. As I neared the end of the set, I realized that I had been keeping up with the rest of the lane-the three guys who were so much faster than I. Then after practice ended, the assistant coach came up and told me what a great practice I had just swum.

That evening, I recalled this statement in Science and Health: “Whatever it is your duty to do, you can do without harm to yourself.” To me it related to a passage in the Bible from Psalms that says, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” And I understood that what had happened at practice that afternoon proved the truth of those two statements.

The rest of that freshman season at college, I made a lot of progress with my swimming. And I got several lifetime bests (my best times) at our conference championships. Today, two swim seasons later, I still thank God for that day when the mind and body said, “You can’t do this,” and God replied, “Yes, you can.”

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