Just Jump

"That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the task itself has become easier, but that our ability to perform it has improved."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no shame in trying and failing.

Shame comes from refusing to try.

once there was a little blue fish named Dory.

I had one of those profound, "This-is-why-I-mother" days yesterday.  Lily came home from diving, frustrated and upset.  She was fighting with her fear of the high dive and completing an inward tuck.  She had done it once, but every time she climbed those stairs, her fear would overtake her, and try as she might to convince herself otherwise, her mind could not make her body leave the board.  In a tearful mess, she relayed practice to me, one attempt after another, becoming more emotional with each retelling. Not only had the inward become the enemy, she knew that next week she would have to attempt a reverse (also known as a gainer) in order to compete, and the reverse when incorrectly attempted, hurts.  Hurts bad.

I advised her to write her frustrations in her journal, venting all the emotion to paper, then set a goal for how she was going to accomplish her goal--another thing she hates: writing.  We sat together at the desk, me blogging and her tearfully penning her experience.  After ten minutes, she asked, "Will you come watch me and help me if I practice the inward 50 times?  Then maybe I won't be afraid any more."

Out we went to the pool.  And I watched as my sweet little fish beat that fear.  Fifty-one times she walked to the end of that board, went through the motions and hurtled her body first up, then out, then down.

And after fifty-one times and one hundred and three minutes, her fear had been replaced by strength. By skill. By trust in herself.

She did a little dance, there on the end of the board, pointing at the water and singing, "I'm not afraid you any more, inward."  And she meant it.

Then, after fifty-one tries, she worked on the reverse.  She slapped and she flopped and she never once completed it.  But every time, she would come up out of the water with a positive comment, "That hurt, but I'm not going to stop."  or "I felt my body getting closer!"

Because she was unable to complete the inward dive at practice that morning, she was ineligible to compete the dive that night, but nothing was going to stop her trying it during warm-up.  She was full of excitement and a tinge of anxiety as she waited for her age group to be called.  And when they were called, she was first in line for that high board.

It wasn't beautiful.  But it was perfect.  Absolutely perfect.

She beat her fears.  And her mama bear couldn't have been prouder.  I shed a few tears of my own that night.

Today?  Today she faces the reverse giant.  And I'll be there, cheering her on.

Linking up to Jenny Matlock's Alphabe-Thursday.