trusting

Original one of a kind illustration
by Judith Parsons (Jp Parsons) 2016

I went to the water to heal. I try very hard to let the ebb and flow of life move through me, I take it in stride. I go to where the world is quiet, where bubbles caress me and take me deeper into myself.

If you are a water person, then you know what I mean when I speak about the way the water heals the soul. You then also know the way the bubbles pull you inside them, where you can breathe under water.

I had a friend, she told me a story about a large bubble of air underwater. She was asked to step into the bubble and breathe. To trust the air, under water. She trusted and she gulped in air. That story stuck with me. I wonder if she ever gets into the water these days.

There are energies swirling around us, like water, wanting us to be strong and place our positiveness into their emptiness. If we invert the analogy of gulping air from a bubble, if we are placing positive energy into the water, it connects and spins and swirls into the whole.

We are connected like that. We slide into one another and and morph and change. There is a great saying, “if it is meant for you—then it will not pass you by.”  There are people and experiences that change us. We flow, we rise like the tides and we crawl upon the sandy surface.

Tonight I was back into the water with an adult that is learning to swim. He is learning how to trust in his buoyancy. Most of us take that trust for granted. Most of us are taught young how to swim and we never question floating. 

It is an interesting phenomenon, teaching someone to trust in something that is so foreign and so unreal to them. That person is trusting fully in the instructor. The innocent, unknowing one is trusting totally in the knowledge of the instructor. 

I asked my fearful student if he would try a new technique.  When he turned to take a breath, to allow his  shoulder to keep turning over, so he would be upon his back. To then lift his chin, raise his chest and start moving his arms so he was buoyant upon his back. 

He DID it! 

He was able to figure out how to turn on his back and rest, so he could rest in the knowing…he could relax and always know if he was tired in the water he had a way to rest.  He didn’t need to be upon the shore. He just needed to trust in his own abilities.

Life makes us stronger, we swim and keep swimming. It is what we do. Then we rest upon our backs or rest upon the shore. We pant and laugh upon our backs —as the sun shines upon our faces and we smile.

We got this. We are ALL so connected!

Wooohooooooo!!

Swimming…soaring…shining beside you all!