The Bald Goat

When I was in high school, I decided to join the swim team. I would love to tell you that this is a picture of me, powering through a 200 meter butterfly race, but this is a picture of the Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps at a 2008 time trial. Any picture of me would have been pathetic. When I joined the swim team I was a chubby kid who lost 30 lbs of fat in the first month of practice. By the end of my time on the swim team, I had lost most of my baby fat, but now was a skinny kid that no way resembled the power house you see here on the right. I love to swim and I am as comfortable in the water as a fish. I once fell asleep underwater in a SCUBA class in college. So relaxing…

While I was on the swim team I had the opportunity to learn the four different kinds of swimming strokes. Freestyle (what most people learn to swim), Backstroke (the standard stroke…on your back), breast stroke (what is most akin to swimming like a frog), and the butterfly (swimming for the elite, the strong, the coordinated). I learned the first three easy enough and swam them in practice and in competitions, but the butterfly was something that was only attempted by the best. It takes raw power. Something I did not have, but I told my coach that I wanted to try to learn this stroke and he began to train me. I learned how to do this stroke and I felt like a real swimmer now. And then it happened…

I was set to swim the butterfly stroke in competition.

I should have realized that the reason you train on the swim team is to be able to compete and what you practice you will be expected to perform. And so this fateful day came and I stepped up on the starting blocks. The buzzer sounded and I dove into the pool. I was doing it! I was swimming the butterfly stroke and I made it all the way to the end of the pool… but that was only one fourth of the distance I had to go. I turned and began the return lap and I did not feel as strong. Every stroke was a struggle, but I made it back to the wall. I was half way done.

I could have called it quits. The other swimmers were way ahead of me by now. I was not going to win or even place at this competition. But for some reason I decided to kick off the wall and keep going.

And then I heard this voice.

It was my friend Mike. I was in the lane closest to the wall and he was walking along the lane next to me shouting at me to keep going! I suddenly felt a burst of energy and strength that allowed me to keep going and finish the remainder of the race. I lost, miserably, but I finished.

You see, Mike knew how much I wanted to swim this race and he knew how hard I had been working to achieve this goal. And there at the race, he could see that I was struggling and he did what he could to help me. He came along side me and spoke words of encouragement to guide me. I don’t know if I would have finished the race without him.

It makes me think of a passage from Donald Miller’s book, “Father Fiction” where he talks about mentors.

It is like you are swimming in a river with two equal currents…People assume that when you are swimming in a river you know which way you are going. There are certain currents that are strong and it is in those currents that we need someone to come along, pull us up, and direct us in the way we need to go.

I feel like sometimes when we think of a passage like this we think that the person who comes along to help someone else is older, wiser, bigger, better, smarter, or whatever than the person who needs help. But Mike was not the team captain or an adult. He was not someone special. Just a regular guy. He was my team mate and he knew what was going on.

But most importantly… he was someone who did something. Might not seem like much, but he did what he could to help and it made all the difference in the world.

Lord, help me to understand that I can make a difference to someone. To help them along their path. Give me the eyes to see such opportunities and the strength, boldness, and courage to be the encouragement that they need.