Lessons From The Circle Pool

Many years ago, when I was about six or seven years old, my family and I were on vacation in the serene Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania at the Pinebrook Bible Conference and Retreat Center. They used to have a really unique swimming pool there, a type that I had never seen before and have never seen again. It was a circular pool instead of the standard rectangular one that you find at such places. We had been there before a few times and came to call it “The Circle Pool” whenever we would reminisce about the place and nearly forgot the name of the conference center entirely by always referring to it as “The Place with The Circle Pool”. While that pool is long gone now, we still remember it fondly. At the outer rim of the pool, it was shallow and then got deeper as you got to the center. The shallow part was only a foot or so deep, but the center was a respectable six feet. My older brother was having fun running around with some new kids he met, and my little sister was too young to swim on her own without our mom holding her, so I decided it was a good time to try to teach myself how to swim in the shallow parts of the pool.

I wasn’t really meeting with any great success, so I thought I’d sit on the rim for a while and just “people watch” for a bit. At one point, my Dad came over from the deeper parts and sat down beside me for a breather. I can't remember what we talked about any longer, but at one point he must have been concerned that I wasn’t having a good time because he looked over at me and asked if I wanted to go THROUGH the pool with him to the other side. I thought that sounded really cool, so naturally I said "yes" and hopped up on his back, and wrapping my arms around his neck, we set off for the other side. It was really exciting, at first. The sun was shining and the water was at the perfect temperature and everyone was having a fun time splashing all around us. As we moved closer to the other side, the water was slowly getting deeper, and deeper, and I found myself going from happy and carefree to increasingly anxious and fearful. For what I lacked in swimming abilities I made up for in my understanding of numbers. As it was, my Dad was walking us through the water but I knew his height. He was 5'11" and I also knew what that would mean. It meant that the water at the center of the pool was an inch deeper than he was tall, so I was quickly getting concerned about just exactly HOW we were going to get through. Well, the water was rising and I was getting more and more anxious, then, it happened. The steady footsteps of my father suddenly stopped and we began to float. My grip on my Dad was less secure as he had to stretch out his arms to swim. I gripped tighter, and like the brave soul that I was ... closed my eyes. It felt kind of surreal as we made our way through with all the laughing and splashing around from everyone else in the pool until suddenly again ... I could feel the footsteps of my father and the waters began to subside. As the fear subsided, I opened my eyes and was struck by how foolish I had just been, closing my eyes through what very well may have been the most exciting part of our little adventure together. I was equally struck by the realization of how silly I was at not trusting in my father's ability to see me safely through this journey no matter how deep the water might get. Still, it was a great experience, and even at that young an age the spiritual lessons were not lost on me. The first was the realization that passing through life has times of joy and times of stress, but it’s a short passage in the end and if fear closes your eyes for too long, you may just miss out on the best parts of it. The best lesson however, was the one where I realized that although I was anxious and afraid, holding on to my father through the waters, no matter how deep, brought me securely through to the other side.

The power of this lesson remains with me still. For, while my dad was an accountant by day, he was a Bible teacher by night. He worked long and hard in the evenings to earn multiple degrees in Bible and theology and along the way taught in evening Bible institutes in the Philadelphia area to help those with tight incomes learn and grow in their faith, and in his retirement years even pastored a church along with everything else. Through it all he tried to bequeath as much of this knowledge and wisdom to us as well, as best he could, and he left us with many great lessons to cherish. There was one that served as a common thread that held them all together throughout the years, and that one was that we should hold on tightly to our Heavenly Father because “He is the rock that doesn't roll”. It would have been easy to miss that one, because it seems so simple. But it would resonate back to me in my greatest time of need … when I lost him. He had a knee replacement surgery and we were all looking forward to a rejuvenated dad, but after only two weeks into recovery and after an especially hard physical therapy session, he died unexpectedly and quite suddenly. We were all stunned. The rock of the family was gone. All the fun plans we had and all the things we were looking forward to do were now, never to be. I took it exceptionally hard. For over a year I had chest pains and panic attacks and checked myself into emergency rooms so often that my family doctor put me through a full cardiac stress test and when it came back normal said to me “So, are you done going to the ER now?!” I felt lost, like a ship at sea with a broken rudder. As it got worse and I was nearing my wit’s end. Then, somehow … it hit me and I remembered that lesson at the Circle Pool all those years ago. It was more of a feeling than a voice, but it was speaking just the same, “Hold on to The Father in the deep waters. He’s The Rock that doesn’t roll.” So I did. I bathed myself in prayer and immersed myself in what I still consider to be God’s words to us written in the scriptures, and slowly, surely, the deep waters began to subside and I felt the footsteps of a far greater father, leading me safely to the other side. Dad was still teaching me, even then. That was fifteen years ago now, and when I look back, it is not how he died that I remember, but rather how he lived and all the love and lessons that he left for us to keep locked in our hearts. But the greatest lesson of all was the one he never knew he taught, the lesson at “The Circle Pool”.