Just hold your breath, relax, and let yourself go...

Given the choice between sailing in smooth or rough waters, I am sure that most of us would pick the kinder and gentler option.  Yet every once in a while we all crave the adventure that comes from getting into a small boat and paddling down a river in which eventually the white water rapids will pump up our adrenaline levels and make us feel excited and alive.  This does not change the fact that while we are riding inside the wildest ride of our life, fear, anxiety, and confusion typically manage to overwhelm most of our senses.  However, there is something to be said about coming face to face with our fears and mortality that has the ability to teach us to appreciate in a more powerful way than ever our otherwise simple lives.

I remember once paddling down the beautiful Tuolumne River in a white water rafting expedition that my then wife and I joined with a group of friends.  The adventure could all be done in a single day for those that did not want to spend a night camping in the wilderness. However, we truly wanted to submerge ourselves in the whole experience instead.  The two day, one night outdoor adventure was my first taste of white water rafting that included a Category 5 portion named Clavey Falls.  Category 5 means that any harder than that and it cannot be done at all.  You need do this at least once in your life in order to appreciate the sense of overwhelming power that water possesses when nature creates these impressive rapids.  It is as if the water has a mind of its own and is able to do at will whatever it wants to you and your raft while traversing this portion of the river.

A few days before we took off on this trip, one of my co-workers and a participant of the planned vacation brought in the local newspaper with an article addressing exactly the same kind of adventure.  In the article there was quite a bit of advice and some definite warnings.  The writer was morbid enough to include a few statistics and stories of how many people get hurt and some even drown.  He explained how risky each of the categories was, and included quotes from individuals that had almost lost their lives in a similar adventure to ours.  After reading the article, my then wife and I looked at each other with owl eyes and wondered if we were doing the right thing or simply being too risky.  The trip had been planned months earlier and by the time we were having second thoughts, all of the expenses were non-refundable.  A few minutes of pondering and eventually we came to the same conclusion that we were not going to lose our four hundred dollar per person fee, and of course, we would be extra careful. 

In the article, one of the accounts read of an individual that when tossed overboard from the raft got sucked under water by what was called a whirlpool effect.  The rapid motion of water mixed with the right underground shape of the river sometimes creates an effect that is similar to what you see when you open the lid of your washing machine and the clothes that are on top get sucked down towards the bottom.  After struggling for a while and as the victim began to feel too tired and weak to get out of the water sucking whirlpool, he simply got pulled under towards the bottom of the river and eventually emerged a few tens of feet away in a much calmer place.  The victim recalled this anxious moment as if finally letting go and stopping the struggle to survive and accepting fate, whatever that would be in the end.  Finally, I remember the author of the article sharing the advice that if you ever found yourself sucked in by the whirlpool effects of the white water rapids, not to fight it since this would only be pointless and probably make you expend the required energy you would need to swim back into your raft afterwards.  Instead, the author wrote, you should just hold your breath, relax, and let yourself go.  Once the whirlpool has sucked you under it should then release you at a different location which hopefully will not be so turbulent, and you will be able to swim back to safety.  This is one of those lessons that most definitely can only come in handy if you know it before the fact and in advance.  Letting yourself be sucked in by the river in order to survive, goes contrary to your instincts.  Most of us would struggle against the current and probably lose the fight eventually and most likely drown.  But knowing this little bit of information could save our lives instead.

I can think of many moments in life that have similarities to the effects of being sucked in by a white water rapid whirlpool.  Sometimes I tend to get myself so tangled up in situations that the more I struggle to get myself out, the harder it seems for me to survive the moment in the end.  We've all been there as parents, opposing everything that our teenage kids do that from the go instinctively make the hair in the back of our necks stand up.  "Dad, I want a tattoo...it's only a piercing...everybody else drinks...smoking pot is not addictive...everybody else is going..." all are words that once you hear them coming out of your child's mouth the waters begin to rise and the powerful swirl starts its sucking act of dragging you into an argument.  Of course, as a parent you feel the responsibility of having to impose some kind of rule in hopes that in the end you will be able to enforce it.  However, most of your reaction is truly originated out of the same survival instinct that you would feel while swimming as hard as you can to get out of a whirlpool.  As a parent you know it is insane to simply accept the crazy requests of a 17 year old teenager asking permission to spend the night at another teenager's home without supervision.  So you stand your ground and do what comes natural and is reasonable, you simply say "No!"  For the next day or so the struggle continues since the child knows that he or she can eventually wear you down, because they are relentless, just like the water rapids.

I have learned to pick my battles sort to speak.  It is not that I will give in to the tireless efforts of the teenage voice that keeps nagging its request for some most impossible act.  I simply have learned that instead of struggling from the beginning, tiring myself almost to death, I make the point of addressing the issue once, and then walk away.  The child obviously knows that if he persists he will have power to try to wear me down, so of course he pursues with his efforts.  The true lesson comes in what I do next, which is pretty much the same as getting me out of a sucking whirlpool in the middle of a raging white water rapid.  I just get the air I will need to survive, relax, and let myself go.  No more fighting, no more arguing, and definitely no more allowing the moment to cause excessive anxiety, stress, or worries.  The only difference from the advice given by the author of the aforementioned article is that I also do what most of you might guess...I say a little prayer too.  As I struggle to not allow my instincts to kick in and put me on a totally defensive posture, I close my eyes and pray..."God, Bless this child that I want so badly to yell at!  Keep me sane in this moment of anger and frustration.  I know I can be much more effective as a father here, than from prison...Amen."

The act of letting go of what is pulling me down into moments of frustration, anger, and pain can be truly empowering and liberating.  Instead of fighting every battle, I have decided to allow God to take on some of the biggies for me.  I cannot make my oldest teenage son change any reckless or dangerous behavior on my own.  As far as I can tell, this task requires supernatural powers which I do not posses.  I for one am not a superhero and lack mind altering abilities.  I can take care of him to the best of my abilities, but I cannot make him think in any particular way.  I know that God is working in the background making things happen as they need to happen for him to eventually learn whatever lessons he must learn to become what he is destined to become, a great man.  If you are not a believer, and more so if you are an atheist, it probably crosses your mind that this is a total copout on my end.  To be honest with you, I can live with that assessment on your part without a worry in the world because in the end, I am the one that has to handle the situation and not you.  On the other hand, if you have any kind of higher power belief system and you find yourself in circumstances similar to mine, where your struggles have worn you down and pretty much sucked the life out of you, I suggest you also find a way to get the air you need to survive, relax, and let God take care of the parts that are way out of your hands too.  All I can say is what good can come out of not being able to survive the struggle?  Will you have the strength, the energy needed when the time comes for you to swim back on to the boat to continue your ride down the river of your life?  What sense does it actually make to struggle against something as powerful and that is truly and mostly out of your hands?

I don't want to get all preachy, but I do want to make sure you understand that as long as you believe that God can take care of your needs, you might as well give him those needs that are truly beyond your abilities and control.  After all, what would you have to lose?  I am not talking about being lazy and expecting God's blessings without doing your job, not at all.  You do have the responsibility to do your part, and I am pretty sure you know what that means.  If you already know that swimming against the current will not solve the problems in your life, becoming a martyr in the process seems pretty silly.  I might not understand how it is that God will fix my child in the end, but I do know that it will be exactly as it should be and that my job is not to know how, but to trust in Him.

From the early days of my life as a child and later on as a teenager, the one consistent and unwavering Truth in my life has always been that God has never forsaken me.  What actually surprises me the most about me is how as soon as my life became stable and rewarding, that was the moments in which I decided to backtrack in my faith and give less credit to my faith.  Science ruled my mind and managed to give me answers to my questions allowing me to be less reliant on God for answers.  However, there is no doubt that the less I prayed and the farther I walked away from the spiritual part of my life, the hollower the answers that I discovered via science became in the end.  I am by far one of the most skeptical men you will ever meet, attributing almost everything that happens in my life to logical reasoning and probabilities.  Yet I have also grown to develop an amazing sense of reasoning that is able to find answers not only in what I am able to measure, but also in what I am able to feel.  For example, I challenge you to sit down and figure out the mathematical probability of finding true love.  I can imagine that a formula could be generated with a plus and minus percentile of accuracy based on your personal preferences, belief system, the number of individuals that might meet your unique likes and dislikes within the age range that would make them most compatible with yourself, chances of meeting them randomly or by presentation, geographic location, marital status, and at least twenty more significant factors.  In the end and once you have plugged in all the data and made your calculations, a statistical value can be generated that will tell you what are the chances of you finding true love.  Yet, chances, probabilities, and odds mean absolutely nothing unless you yourself go out into the world and seek true love, give it a chance, take the risk, and open yourself to the possibility of experiencing it in your life.  The emotional exposure that you give to your life will magnify the chances that any scientific probability might suggest possible.  In this same way I feel that making yourself accessible to the grace of God works towards your spiritual well being.  Even if God surrounds you with all of His love, compassion, and blessings, you too have to go out into the world and seek Him, give him a chance, take the risk, and open yourself to the possibility of experiencing Him in your life in order to partake of His blessings.

Just as within myself I am able to find the connection that God's supernatural intervention is key to bringing the best out of my own children, you too can enlist His grace to bring to pass the secret desires that are inside of your mind and heart.  Don't waste your time struggling against the life sucking whirlpools in which you tend to fall into when things get tough.  The sooner you realize that if you hold your breath, relax, and let yourself go eventually you will emerge in a much better place where the waters are much calmer for you to get back on the boat that is your life.  A lot of what you have been fighting for is truly out of your hands.  Spend your energy and efforts on what you have true influence over and leave the rest to God.

Dad