New Life...New Memories (Part 2)

After being exposed to and falling in love with open lake swimming and being a novice for 3 years now, I now realize that it is such a true depiction of my new life after trauma.

Reconnecting with the sport of pool swimming which was engrained in me at an early age, was just the thing that I went back to to reconnect with a life that I had lost. Reliving those fabulous childhood swimming memories every time I adjusted my Speedo goggles and smelled the chlorine after diving into a pool to begin my swim workout gave me that reconnection that I so desperately wanted. The feeling of being a kid again, living a normal life. A life without a label. Never in my wildest imagination would I ever believe this was to lead to so much more - a new life of adventurous, open lake swimming. This kind of swimming is anything but rote. It is a lot more exciting than pool swimming. Lap lanes and overhead flags are replaced with rocks and aquatic animals. The landscape is absolutely breathtaking and the feeling of swimming in a lake reminds me of just how small I really am and how big my Heavenly Father is. The Creator of open waters is the only one who has the answers to get us through those unpredictable, life-altering, choppy waves of life.

My dad modeled for me what it means for an athlete to be devoted to the sport: from attending swim team workouts every day after elementary school to attending the same summer swim camp for two weeks in a row, (Dad always thought it was a good idea to do more than the average person.). My dad’s sacrifice of transporting me to swim practice and making sure that I had the necessary equipment for the sport modeled for me what was meant by being a sacrificial parent. This sacrifice and devotion gave me lots of opportunities to keep getting better at the sport – drill in endurance swimming and perfecting all four swim strokes (butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, and freestyle.) After years of coming back to the sport as a middle-aged woman, it was amazing how much muscle memory really exists, for my body still remembered how to swim those same strokes in the water.

Now starting my new life as an open lake swimmer, I’ve experienced that I could not do this new kind of swimming without learning the skills from pool swimming. (Our lives before trauma give us skills to be used after our trauma.) Knowing those skills has made it possible for me to participate in open lake swimming. The thing is, these skills are not enough to be successful as an open lake swimmer. Since the waves of a pool are always calm, there was never a need to practice how to overcome those unpredictable waves of an open lake. This was the newness of this kind of swimming. This new kind of swimming required new skills. In other words, our new lives after trauma require adding new skills to our pool swimming skills.

When we reach our finish line of our traumatic experience, we have a new life. A better life than before. How do we live it?

We cannot use our pool skills alone to master our open lake swim. We will become frustrated and depleted. Our pool skills are not enough because we have not dealt with the unpredictable waves of a swim. Before 2012, I never knew what it was like to be a CK (criminal's kid). My life was normal and predictable. It was a life of being label-free. It was easy. It was pool swimming. Now, having lived with this new label that elicits judgment from others, I’ve learned and continue to learn from my Heavenly Father how to hold on to Him until the next wave passes. The best way that I can describe my new life is that I feel that I have lost a limb and I am learning how to do the basics of life with only three limbs. Learning how to do things differently, starting from ground zero, and learning how to hear from my Heavenly Father, so that I may follow His directions for my life.

You see, I actually have a real need for my Heavenly Father now that is accompanied by my label. If I keep looking back at the most amazing childhood memories with my dad as a pool swimmer, it will keep me from creating new middle-aged memories with my Heavenly Father as an open lake swimmer. Seeing the sights and adventures that accompany my future as an open lake swimmer makes my invisible relationship with my Heavenly Father very visible. This is something that I never experienced in my Christian walk before my traumatic experience. This is what makes my relationship with Him deeper and sweeter. The adventures are what our Heavenly Father wants us to experience with our new lives after trauma. The thing is, we have to learn how to hear from our Heavenly Father. We have to learn how to keep this line of communication open so that we may hear from Him when the next choppy wave enters our path. What I have learned so far is that we need to throw out our rearview mirror to keep us from looking back to our easy days of pool swimming.

The time spent looking into that rearview mirror and wanting and wishing and yearning for our previous life is time stolen from our futures. The time that we miss out on the next exciting, scenic adventure. Our lives are on a timetable, so let’s seize our new life and let every new experience saturate our thoughts so we will not even have a desire to look into our rearview mirror. Not having this desire is extremely difficult, though. How can we do it? By looking for those individuals in God’s Word who were able to resist the temptation of wanting to look back; furthermore, looking for those who did not even have the temptation to do so anymore. These tips are our Heavenly Father’s communicating to us His secrets that we can start using in our lives now. Let’s begin tapping into these new skills that our Heavenly Father leaves for us by reading His Word today!