How God Met Me in My Fear of the Water.
The story below was originally published August 9th, 2025 as a devotional on the DaySpring (in)courage website. This is the unedited version submitted for publication. The published devotional and link is no longer available.
The swim instructors grouped everyone in threes. My group included a three-year-old girl with long dark hair, a 5-year-old girl with red hair and freckles, and me.
Parents sat around the pool perimeter, nervously watching, cheering, and capturing the moments on film.
However, no one was there clapping for me that Spring.
I had driven myself to the lesson.
As a quiet, hate-the-spotlight person, the stares of parents felt uncomfortable. Nothing compared to the fear of having my head beneath water, though.
As a young child, I escaped learning to swim after several failed attempts at lessons. Then, at around age 9, an adult angrily forced me into the deep end of a pool and held me under, determined to make me overcome my “discomfort” and teach me to swim.
Trapped, my heart raced wildly. Deep in the water, I felt smothered as if under a heavy blanket. A general unease in water and the inability to swim became a decades-long traumatic memory.
For years after, I couldn’t bear water in my face. Water gun fights and bobbing for apples were unthinkable. Showers were difficult. As friends enjoyed summers in the pool, I felt fear and shame. I avoided being baptized for years due to the prospect of being fully immersed.
As an adult, I knew logically that I could learn to swim. Bodies are buoyant, and people learn to breathe underwater. But it just wasn’t that easy. After the gentle encouragement of a bible teacher, I came to believe that God wanted me to entrust him with this fear.
Determined to learn how to swim, I found myself at a swim school for small children.
When I enrolled for swim lessons, as a terrified 32-year-old mother of a toddler, I felt very self-conscious. But for his sake, and mine, I wanted to overcome the fear that gripped me. I wanted him to enjoy the water, without my panic in the background.
As I entered the pool, I tried to ignore the parents. I tried to remember that the eyes of my Heavenly Father were upon me. He smiled because this wasn’t just about learning how to swim. It was revisiting trauma and the fear that it had created in me. It was about trusting God in a way I couldn’t imagine.
God met me in the pool that day. Our Father is so tender. He knew I was scared, embarrassed, and full of shame. But I showed up, and He was there. What happened next is all I remember from the experience.
As the instructor led the three-year-old across the pool, the 5-year-old looked into my eyes and excitedly said, “Do you want to practice elevators?”. My first thought? Absolutely, no, I don’t want to go down under the water and pop back up. But when a freckled, 5-year-old grabs your hands like she’s your best friend, and smiles a wide, friendly smile, you say yes. She wasn’t afraid. I had to be strong and courageous.
So, she held my hands, and we went up and down in the water. I don’t know how I did it, but I just did. Something I didn’t think I could do. That little girl will never know how God used her to help me, how she was on a divine appointment. God provided. His message that day? “I see you, and you don’t have to do this alone. I’ve provided someone to be with you and encourage you”.
That day, I began to trust in the water. But it was so much more than that. I felt the fear and “trusted” that God would get me through. He met me there, in fear. In the following months, my life took an unexpected turn that was more frightening than water. My obedience to God to allow Him to enter into the pain of the past made it easier to walk with him through the trauma of the present.
I went on to take adult lessons and learn how to swim at a local YMCA. I continue to swim, and each lap declares victory. God is good. He meets us in our fears. He can be fully trusted. He upholds with his righteous right hand even in water. He heals.