On the way into the Y for swim lessons on Monday, my son and I stopped to let a Y staffer scan my membership card.
While we were standing there, I noticed the big basket of colorful slips of paper that is labeled “Spiritual Vitamins” and suggested that William take one for us to read together. I often take one myself, just to see what random Bible verse I might get and to see how it might apply to my current situation. Often I get a verse that I vaguely recognize, so I end up spending part of my time on the treadmill or elliptical trainer pondering when I might have read that part of the Bible and what it means. (Which is a nice little extra Bible study in an unexpected way, if you think about it. It’s Biblical lagniappe.)
But the lady suggested that we take a slip from a second basket of “Spiritual Vitamins” that are created just for children. “They’re a little easier to explain,” she said, proffering the basket.
The purple slip that William pulled out read, “If you believe you can or you can’t, you are probably right.” I read it aloud to him and said, “Yes, I think that’s true. What do you think, William?”
He scrunched up his face as we walked along the corridor toward the swimming pool and asked me to read it again, which I did. “What does that mean, exactly?” he finally asked.
“Well,” I started. “If you think you can do something, and you believe in yourself that you can do it, then you’ll get it done. But, if you think, ‘Oh, I can’t do that,’ then you probably can’t do it because you don’t think you can.”
William looked unconvinced. For a moment or two, I wished we had gotten a nice easy-to-understand Bible version from some uncontroversial part of the Bible (which, er, is a tall order, now that I think about it). “A little easier to understand, my rear end,” I thought. But this particular bon mot had some real merit, and so I pressed on.
“It means you need to have confidence in yourself,” I said. “The best way to accomplish something is to have faith in yourself and do your best to get something done, not to just give up and say you can’t do it.”
(That wasn’t too bad, was it?)
At that point, we had reached the door to the pool area. Willliam charged inside, and we dropped the conversation. But the more I ruminated over William’s “Spiritual Vitamin,” the more relevant it became to his life–and mine.
William is trying to learn how to swim, and it’s a two-steps-forward-one-step-back process. He’s finally gotten comfortable letting go of me in the water if he’s got a firm grip on a pool noodle or something. But he’s still not yet ready to try floating on his back with me standing guard, no matter how many times I tell him that I’m right there and he’s not going to drown. Maybe all he needs to do at this point is to tell himself that he can learn how to swim…and then set about doing it.
And I need to realize that perhaps this process is just his way of doing that. Just because it’s not a completely linear way of learning to swim doesn’t mean it’s not valid, even if it frustrates his mom.
That, I think, is a good lesson for me in another way. Our faith journeys don’t always have to be linear, always-going-forward. But if we tell ourselves that we are learning, that we are making progress, and then do it…then we are. If we believe that we can, we can.
With God’s help, of course.
The House on the Rock 