photo by the amazing Jill DeVries
One summer, when I was really quite small, my older brother and I devised a rather elaborate plan, using Flintstone houses that came in our Happy Meals, G.I. Joes and Polly Pockets. The plan was simple. I would concur my fear of swimming in the deep end of the pool, join the ranks of “the big kids” and prove that I wasn’t a ninny. Please note, the Flintstone houses played an integral role in mapping out the pool and plotting our plan of attack.
The weather grew warm, from warm to hot, from hot to sweltering and with its change the week of our vacation and the accomplishment of our plan crept ever nearer. I was convinced I could do it, I would concur the pool, I was ready. After all, my model pool and motivational inspiration had been propped on my dresser for weeks (though I had to haul a stool from the kitchen to my room in order to view it).
The first day of vacation arrived. We threw on our suits and headed for the pool. I jumped into the shallow end and decided that maybe I would just hang out there for a while… you know, to adjust to the water, take one obstacle at a time. After all I was in the pool, that counted for something… right?
The next day came and I decided that maybe I should spend a little more time adjusting to the water. However, frolicking in the shallows and pretending you are in the deep is not the same as actually experiencing the water that lay on the other side of the buoyed rope. And so, after days of deliberation, of swimming to that taunting rope that bobbed on the rippling surface of the glinting, over chlorinated water, I decided it was time. I dipped my little arms in the water, shoved on my swimmies (water wings, fake muscles, floatation devices, whatever you would like to call them), walked calmly to the line that read “8 ft” and jumped. As my ears filled with water I heard my mother gasp. When I bobbed to the surface, wiping water frantically from my joy ridden face, I saw my brother, flailing as he paddled, racing across the pool towards me. “What was that!?” He asked, “What about our training? We had a plan. You were going to wear floaties and use a kick board, and…” I cut him short and simply said, “I don’t know, I just knew I could do it… It felt like the right time.”
The moral of this story (though the facts may be slightly ascue), is simply this: Sometimes things take time. Sometimes we need to allow our selves the freedom of growing into our own skin. There are moments when I question the way I am using the time in my life, but then I look up, see that maybe the water isn’t so scary, that if I just slip on my trusty swimmies and jump, it will all work out.
Timing may not be everything, but it most certainly is a huge factor in our lives. People in history existed in the time that they did inorder to shape the world into the place that it is today.
And so I ask you, is now your time?
xx
