Baptized at the Lap Pool

A friend once described swimming like this: “It’s like climbing a ladder that never goes up, never goes anywhere.”

That image comes to mind every time I get in the pool, which these days is just about every morning. I’m healing from a running-induced stress fracture in my shin and for the last five months my only exercise has been swimming.

Mostly my friend was right. Swimming is like climbing a ladder—a ladder lain on its side. The ladder doesn’t go up and, especially in a lap pool, it doesn’t lead anywhere. Back and forth you go like a ping pong, bouncing off the pool walls, over and over. To someone watching, the whole enterprise must look absurdly boring.

But here’s where my friend wasn’t right. To the swimmer, swimming is the most delicious feeling imaginable. I never think about where I’m going in the pool. Indeed that’s part of the magic. Without a destination, without thinking about direction I’m free to focus on the movement itself.

And what wonderful movement! Nothing but nothing feels quite like slipping through water. Water is like living air, a surrounding presence reminding your body of its vitality from head to toe. I love everything about swimming—the way my arms and legs are streamlined like arrows; the way the water’s surface rises, breaks and recedes every time I turn my head for a breath; the rolling, heavy silence of submersion.

I’ve already written here of my unbecoming spiritual meltdown over this stress fracture, which, as I feared, has indeed robbed Kate and me of a backpacking trip we’d planned to take next week in California.

But the injury has come with a gift—swimming. I’ve swum for years, but since moving to New York I’d let swimming go somewhat, partly because pools are less accessible here than in California, partly because the lure of running in Central Park was so great. Now that I’m back in the pool every day it’s as if an old part of myself has been returned to me. I grew up by the ocean and still, all these years later, I feel stirs of childhood whenever I get in the water.

This morning I got to the pool a little earlier than usual, so I had a few minutes to spare when I finished my laps. I pushed away from the wall and let myself slowly sink. Around and above me swimmers churned away, trailed by festoons of bubbles. The world turned silent and blue. I floated, weightless, my arms and legs dangling lazily in the cool depths. For a moment I felt I could have stayed there forever in that still, quiet corner of God’s heart. I thought of the blessings hidden in setbacks, the blessings hidden everywhere in our lives we so rarely have eyes to see. I thanked God for the gift of water and kicked myself back to the surface, reluctant, as ever, to leave.