The YMCA calendar indicated that only up to three lanes would be available this morning. Normally, that means one of the local youth teams is using the facility for practice.
I worried about whether I’d be able to get one last training session in before the YMCA closed the pool for its annual week of maintenance. I even stressed a little bit about it while watering the new plants in our garden—a quiet process that should be relaxing.
I hurried over to the pool to see if I could snag a lane. Before I changed from my street clothes into my jammers, I asked the lifeguard how long the lanes would be available. She guessed there’d be availability all morning, as the youth training had been either canceled or postponed. Even with that assurance, I left my drink, phone, goggles, and two different lap counters at the end of a lane to ensure I wouldn’t lose my spot during the locker room minutes it took me to change and shower.
Laughably, there were only one or two other swimmers in the pool when I slid into my lane. And when I finished swimming my 1,800 yards and climbed onto the pool deck, the lifeguard got down from her chair.
I was the only swimmer in the pool.
By the time I recorded my stats into a tracking app and toweled off, the water was already still.
This was a metaphor for me. Maybe a parable.
My counselor regularly tells me that the amount of mental energy I put into my public persona sounds exhausting. I have what psychology literature categorizes as an “anxious attachment” to people in my inner circle. In short, I carry a lot of anxiety, and I analyze potential scenarios more than an NFL draft expert in April.
It’ll surprise nobody who has prayed with me lately that I’m getting fitted for a night guard this week, because my dentists are all impressed at how hard I grind my teeth.
I try to cool my overheated imagination on hiking trails, dirt roads, remote rivers, adrenaline rushes—and in the YMCA competition pool. Sometimes these venues and activities act as release valves; other times they are just quiet spaces for me to let my internal algorithms compute long enough for the fans to shut off. I escape this way so much that in March—unsolicited—two different elders from my church told me, “You do the practice of solitude well.”
I fall off the faith wagon—not as often on the “that’s too scary” side as I do on the computational, “how do I make this work for me” side. In other words, if I left the disciples’ boat in the Galilee storm, I probably would’ve tried swimming to Jesus instead of walking. I would’ve wanted the eleven dudes back in the boat to know I had earned my exclusive experience—that I was worthy of the invitation.
All of my worry about getting my laps in today was unnecessary. Even if the pool had no lanes open, it wouldn’t have been catastrophic for my training regimen. I’m not an Olympic swimmer who needs to shave .28 seconds off their PR before opening ceremonies. I could probably walk a mile blindfolded on a meandering forest trail faster than I can swim a straight one.
Trusted voices have pointed out that I bring that same unnecessary computation to both my relationships and my perspective on the world. I spend too much time practicing conversations, conjuring social media posts, and anticipating therapy sessions as though swimmers occupy the other seven lanes. Or maybe all eight.
The figurative swim lanes of my life aren’t always empty, but the pool is almost always emptier than I imagine. And the days when it’s metaphorically full are just as good for my soul as my laps were for my lungs this morning. I’ve got dozens of stories of when an alternative to what I had so thoroughly planned far surpassed what I didn’t get to do.
23 years ago, I prayed prostrate in an Indiana cornfield, begging God for a job I’m now so very glad I didn’t get. I would’ve never started my company, which has given me a career and life far better than I ever dreamed for myself. I got all three versions of a vasectomy to avoid fatherhood, and my sovereignly-delivered daughter has been one of the best things that ever happened to my soul’s formation.
My books, blogs, and journal entries include a mountain of evidence that I don’t need to spend as much time worrying about the lanes of my life—pool ones or otherwise. This morning, that virtual evidence showed up as a physical reality.
I’m not saying Jesus walked on water at the Jamerson YMCA today. I’m not claiming he told the reverberating wake of my laps, “Peace! Be still!”
No, he just whispered into my heart that I don’t have to swim to him. And maybe I don’t have to swim so hard in front of others.
