Standing on the Edge

My work history includes many seasons of teaching swimming and diving. Outside at a small yacht club, inside at a community pool, under the sun in backyards. I've taught people from age 2 to age 70. I've even taught my grandma.

I didn't realize that all of those years of breathing in chlorine-filled air were preparing me for the job I currently hold.

Like my little, dripping charges of days gone by, my students here deal with immense anxieties as they stand on the edge of the abyss. The pulpit is as intimidating as a 3 meter board, and they approach it with the same fear that I saw in the eyes of kids attempting their first swan dive. My role, then, is to placate the fear, to shout encouragement from the deck below: "You can do this. Just give it a try. Breathe!"

Their pulses race, their eye widen, they wring their hands. Their introductions are almost invariably too fast; their relief when they are finished floods the rest of the room.

I forget this fear. I've done my share of belly flops, to be sure, but I've also mounted those steps, taken my bounces, and plunged in more times than I can count, so my job now, here, today, is to remember that they haven't. My comments to them need to be honest as well as gentle, accurate as well as kind. I need to embody both grace and truth.

Some days I'm better at this than others. Like a frustrated coach with a clipboard and a stopwatch, sometimes I show my disappointment on my face. Sometimes it comes out in the edge in my voice. Sometimes I spend more time on what they did wrong than on what they did right.

Jesus was the only one who held grace and truth in perfect balance all the time. The rest of us foul it up on a daily basis. But in my teaching I'm striving to present more of him, and less of me. I have a ways to go with this.

I hope my students remember that I'm a rookie, too.