I.

When the staff at Timberwolf Lake greet you at the camp entrance, they choose you and one other person from your car.

You, daughter of Eve, and a son of Adam, are helped into a harness that squeezes tightly around your waist and between your legs.

They guide you 55 feet up to the launch point of a zip-line overlooking the lake and hook you to safety. As the staff secures you to the steel cable, they explain how to step off, keep yourself upright, and lift your feet as you hit the water. The blond son recommends a faithful leap, and not wanting to disappoint; you do a sort of ambulatory plié that feels much more than it looks like a jump.

The ride is quick, and you miss the scenery. You are afraid to take your hands off your harness. As you near the surface, you bend your knees slightly, preparing to dap atop the lake.

A stone skips best at an angle of twenty degrees from the water, with plenty of speed and surface area to create bounce. When it falls shy of its minimum velocity, it sinks.

Somehow the center of your dome stays dry, so you dip your head beneath. Submerged like sleep.

Whitney asks me if I’m acting in faith. I tell her I’m not sure what that means. She says, “Peter had faith when he listened to Jesus in that storm. He believed that Jesus would keep him safe, so he walked on water.” I told her that might be true, but he got scared and sank; he lost his faith. She asks me, “have you even stepped off the boat?” Damn, Whitney, I’m fifteen. She realizes her tone, “ or maybe you’ve taken a step, but now you’re just standing there?”

I wonder what kept Peter from making it to Jesus. Was it the winds and swell reminding him of his impermanence? Or the crippling pressure he felt when he met Jesus’ sure gaze?

Here was the most perfect man on the earth, walking on water and helping him to do the same. How could he ever live a life that met up to the standards and expectations of such a being? Maybe the waves seemed more inviting than the prospect of failing the son of God. Or maybe, with his one-track mind, Peter found himself confused amidst all the commotion and never lost his faith so much as he got distracted.

I can relate to Peter.

I tell Whitney I don’t think I have moved much and will seriously consider a leap as an act of faith. She advises only if I genuinely feel it.

Two weeks after I get home, I wake my mother from her sleep to tell her I think I might want to get baptized. She is difficult to stir until I say the word. She jolts, then insists I wake and tell my father immediately. He will be the one to baptize me, and she wants to discuss planning with him.

My parents rent a hall at a Church of Christ in Evart, Michigan, a thirty-minute drive from our home. The pool my father submerges me in is about ten feet wide; the water, the tub, or both are blue, like the community pool I grew up swimming in.

I wear white shorts and a blue t-shirt from participating in S.H.O.C.K., a student organization about helping others. A small corner where my father held me on my sleeve stays dry; he jokes that it didn’t take and that we’ll have to do it again. I laugh.

Someone from our church asks if I feel different. I sit on the pew with my white towel wrapped around me, staring ahead, trying to place what has changed. She cuts in with the story of her baptism before she lets me answer her.

Nothing has changed.