The memory came back to me, long forgotten, triggered by the small arms clinging so tightly to me, and then pushing me away, saying “I want to do it myself.” Its funny how memories do that, ones that have not come to mind in a long time, all the sudden a smell, a place, a persons face, or a certain phrase and you are right there again. I could paint a picture of taking her swimming, this tiny toddler who had already seen more than most adults in her life. The number of foster homes she had lived in matched her age, adults went in and out of her life like clockwork and just as she expected, they always let her down.

We took her to a waterpark with our family for the weekend. She couldn’t swim, most 3 year olds can’t yet. But she wouldn’t let me hold her. She’d play in the shallow water. But wouldn’t let me catch her going down the slide. When we tried the deep water, I held her so she wouldn’t drowned, and she just pushed me away trying to get away from me the entire time. I wouldn’t let her go, because I didn’t want her to drowned, and that made her more upset. She would have rather drowned, than hold on to me.

This is what happens when kids have trauma that makes it hard for them to trust. Just like you and I might be leery to trust someone who has let us down in the past. But for kids who experience trauma and neglect in their earliest years of life, it goes deeper than just a memory. It’s hard-wired right into their brain. Their brains tell them: If you want to survive, do not trust anyone, especially a parent.

I speak about this often. I believe we have this same trust problem with God. We don’t seem to want to need Him. We do want to love him, but when it comes to having to rely on Him, we tend to push away. We want to do it ourselves. Trusting Him sounds nice but then we’d have to actually expect Him to provide and care for us, and that would mean giving up control of that ourselves, and maybe also that would mean we couldn’t look proudly at all our accomplishments and say “look what I did”, and maybe we’d have to believe, ACTUALLY believe, He’s never let us down in the past.

I knew it the moment Sam tried to push me away. I had given him a piggy back ride into the deep water at the pool. He can swim, for a few feet. So he gets by in the shallow water, but he’s not quite ready for the deep end. But he was sure he was. I was trying to explain as he is pushing and struggling to get out of my arms that I can’t let Him go because He will drowned and that’s when I got the flashback to so many years ago in the pool with my foster daughter. And that’s also when I knew God was saying it to me too.

“I want to swim on my own.” That’s what Sam kept saying. And because He’s learning, I let him in shallower water, but in the deep he sinks right to the bottom. But I know how he feels. I want to do it myself too. People look big and cool that can swim on their own. They look like they’re having a lot of fun. Bet they feel really great about themselves.

I wrote a couple weeks ago about a big storm coming in and making a big mess of our place. I thought a few times, “maybe I should ask someone to come help us clean these up?” but I didn’t want to burden anyone and so we plugged away and got quite a bit of it done ourselves. This week we woke up to a flooded house from a water line that broke in the night. As Dan and I rushed to move things and mop up water, and tear out flooring all before the kids woke up, I thought, “this job is bigger than the two of us can handle,” but I didn’t call anyone, we just plugged away for the next couple of hours. Finally, Dan called our insurance who sent a team of people out to help us clean up and get things drying out. I didn’t even know such a group existed. It was a relief, but I still hated having them walk into my disaster and have to clean it up. This is my mess. It’s my problem. And I should clean it up on my own.

So the final straw of the week, was being two hours from home as we’re settling kids in to sleep in the middle of a thunderstorm and pouring rain and getting a text from a neighbor that our cattle are out. Having just been weaned and in a new pen, some of our calves escaped and went out searching for their moms. Being two hours away we reluctantly had to call someone to help. Again, this is our problem, these are our animals, we should have been home, we should have made their pen more secure, and here we are again having to rely on other people to help us with our problems.

The thing is, I want to be good at things. I want to be a great mom, and good farmer, and keep a clean house, and always be a loving, sacrificial wife, and a good community member who volunteers and coaches the team and coordinates the fundraiser and a good business owner who has it all together. I really want to do this life thing well. Are you with me?

But then, I don’t. I yell at the kids, I burn the cookies, I let too many weeds grow, I keep score of his mistakes and I’m always being selfish and yeah, I have five-sometimes-nine kids under the age of 10… I don’t have time to volunteer or coach the team and you’ll be lucky if I remember there even is a fundraiser. And every time an animal dies or a piece of equipment breaks or I just look out and see all that is still undone, I wonder why in the world we even think we can or should do this.

And then I know I’m the kid in the water, wanting to swim on my own. I WANT to be good at things. I WANT to swim on my own. But the truth is, ever since sin entered the world, I can’t swim. Because of sin, I can’t “be good” on my own. The truth is, if I stop clinging to Him, I won’t be “free”, I’ll drowned. In my trauma, in my sinfulness, I don’t want to need Him or anyone else. If I’m being really honest, I want to do it all myself. Its not fun, having to always make those embarrassing phone calls…messed up again, can you help, really need something…yeah, should have learned the lesson, but didn’t, here we go again… yep, sinking, still can’t swim.

I know, when I’m not listening to the liar, that God did not call us to be foster parents or youth ministers or farmers or speakers or advocates because WE are so good at it. We actually are mediocre or borderline poor at all of those things. I know He called us to them because He knew we would need to rely on Him, and in that He could do better work, and His name would be glorified.

The hard part of this, is that in the daily grind, I have to continue to remind myself of this or I easily fall to discouragement. The other hard part, is that in order that we might stay humble and not forget our inability to swim, God continues to force situations where we can’t just “do it ourselves” and have to invite other people into our mess and rely on their help.

I still want to be able to swim on my own. I think because someday in heaven, when “being good” comes easy, we will. But until then, He’s teaching me how. He knows the water I can handle. He knows when I need only his hand and when I have to cling on to his neck. So I can hang on and laugh and enjoy the ride or I can struggle and ultimately drowned determined to do it myself. And I know, my swimming analogy falls short as most of us eventually do learn to swim on our own.

Jesus used a better analogy. He said, “I am the vine, and you are the branches, and those who live in me will bear great fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing.” Jn 15:5 I’m looking at all these falling branches around my yard. Within days of falling, they have already started to die. Their leaves are brown, their branches starting to dry. Once separated from the tree, they will not ever live again. The thing is, I want to be a tree, but I am just a branch. And even if I don’t want to need the tree, I will die with out it. Even if I want to be a tree, it will not change the fact that I am just a branch. I can stay connected to God, I can rely on Him for everything, or I can wither and die on my own. I guess the choice is actually pretty simple after all.