Wet Suits and The "Nemesi"

WET SUITS:

If you like making cookies, you will, undoubtedly, affirm what I’m about to say.

It’s not the cookies.  It’s the dough. 

By the time my wife has baked a batch of Nestle chocolate-chip cookies, I’ve consumed, at least, five cookies worth of dough.  This is such a universal truth, that ice-cream makers jumped on the bandwagon a number of years ago and created cookie dough ice-cream.  

However, in my opinion, the real innovation was dough in a tube.  

While it doesn’t taste the same as homemade, it’s good in a pinch.  And for all you tube-dough eaters out there, you know how it’s done. 

You cut off the top, squeeze the middle and watch that dough flow out, like a mushroom cloud.  

That’s also a great visual of what I looked like when I tried to fit into a wet suit that was several sizes too small. 

You see, this past weekend my friend, Fran, took me SCUBA diving for the first time.  

SCUBA aficionados, please note that I capitalized the acronym even though I don’t know what it stands for. I’m guessing that “Breathing Apparatus” is part of it and not “Buffalo Acrobatics” but, then again, what do I know.  

I’m still a “newbie” to the sport. 

Anyway, because I’ve never been, I had to rely on borrowed gear. 

That included a wet suit. 

The problem is that I outweigh Fran by about seventy pounds. 

Even after I worked myself into a sweat getting a lot of it on, he still had to help.  He pulled and pushed but still couldn’t get it zippered.  Eventually we decided that I just wouldn’t zip it and I would have to deal with whatever cold water got in. 

I also had to deal with the fact that, much like the aforementioned dough, the suit was squeezing me and all of that skin and fat and internal organs had to go somewhere. 

It all bunched up around my chest and so I wound up looking somewhat like a girl in that region. 

But Fran was gracious. 

He only laughed a little. 

So he got me suited up, strapped a buoyancy compensator and tank on my back and put lead weights around my waist.  Once I was equipped and given the safety lesson, I flipped backwards out of the boat and into the water. 

Then it was time to start diving. 

We made our way to the bowline of the boat so that we could use it as a guide as we descended.  I let the air out of my buoyancy compensator and we started to dive.  We got almost to the bottom and then, no matter how hard I flippered, I floated backward to the surface. 

Apparently, despite having lost twenty-five pounds this summer, I still have, what they call in the SCUBA world, positive buoyancy. 

For you lay-people I offer this explanation: if muscle weighs more than fat and fat floats, then you can do the math. 

I asked Fran if he was calling me "fat", as he got more lead weights.

“No.  I’m just telling you God’s laws of physics.”  He said, laughing.

Gee thanks. 

I’m just buoyant. 

And I’ll keep saying that till I stop crying. 

So Fran strapped more lead to my waist and then we tried again. 

This time everything worked and it was amazing.  If you’ve never been diving, I highly recommend it.  I felt like I was exploring an alien planet.  Creatures that I’d only seen in tanks were all around me and took on new meaning.  A lobster in the fish store is calm and sedate after succumbing to Stockholm Syndrome.  In the wild, they are fast and aggressive.  The fish don’t swim away from you and we found ourselves surrounded by a large school.  It was a joyful and worshipful experience. Thirty-five minutes passed like two, and before I knew it, we were ascending.

 

“NEMESI”:

When I was in college I had a nemesis. 

Actually, I had several “nemesi”….or “nemesises”. 

What made them my “plural-of-nemesis” was their uncanny ability to beat me to the things I wanted. 

One slice of pizza left? 

I reach for it and get the top of their hand. 

I wanted to check out a library book?

Guess who had just renewed their check out. 

And this went on for my entire college career. 

Ashamedly, I took it personally, moped, and listened to a lot of grunge music. 

I sure showed them. 

And then God showed me. 

I was mad and depressed because I wanted God’s timing for their life and not the timing He had for me. 

The Bible calls that coveting.  Wanting what God has given to someone else.

I had to repent. 

That included me confessing, to my nemesis, and asking for forgiveness.

He responded really well because he’s a great guy. 

He always was. 

But I wasted years trying to, metaphorically speaking, fit my body into his wet suit.  And the result was exactly the same.  Everything inside me, my spirit, my heart, got all squeezed with coveting and I wound up deformed.  But once I came to grips with God’s timing for MY life, I found freedom.

I found freedom because I began to learn what it means to trust God.  To trust His plans and purposes for me and not just my best attempts at grabbing what was “mine”.  That was a hard and scary thing to do because it meant giving control to God and not claiming it for myself.  But I can tell you, from experience, that THAT “wet suit” fits like a glove.