trying to trust...but I suck at it

Yesterday I arrived at the Y as usual, breathing in the air I love so much--a strange combination of sweat, chlorine, roach spray, and some minty cleaning agent they use. I opened my locker, pulled out my swimsuit, fished my goggles out from the bottom where they had fallen... the usual. But soon it all became unusual. In a bad way.

It seems the pool at the Y is being shut down. At first this may not sound like much of a sorrow, but trust me. It is. There is a community of people who have been going there for over twenty years. They are almost entirely handi-capped and elderly--or both. I have become so fond of these women. Showering in their wheelchairs and talking away with one another, their little plastic baskets of soap and shampoo dangling off the front of their chairs. And rolling right up to the pool's edge, lowering themselves down into the water, where, at once they become free. They smile and float, and are no longer encumbered by their handicap. The water is their good safe place.

Now they are losing this place, and for an undetermined amount of time. Structural damage in the ceiling has made it unsafe. Money is an issue. There are lots of 'reasons.' I talked to the C.E.O. this morning, sitting across his desk, feeling powerless, wanting to do something, trying to listen as he offered a chunk of the ceiling to me as evidence.

Perhaps there is a lesson in here for me. I can't fix this. I can't change the circumstances.

Yesterday, standing in the women's locker room, I stood by helplessly as elderly, overweight, handicapped, naked women sat in their wheelchairs and cried. Okay. Wow. That's overload, Jesus. I can't take that. I jumped in the pool and swam back and forth, in some sort of furious swimming frenzy, my last time in the pool being one of frothing anger instead of liquid tranquility.

Who was I mad at? Don't know. There are other things in my life making me feel helpless, situations in which I must sit by, pray, wait, believe. Trust. I'm not really very good at that.

So I am sitting before Jesus today, trying to do all of the above. I will offer it all up to Him. Again.

But first I think I'll call my friend at The Fresno Bee who might be able to do a story... and maybe that will help, and I know this rich handicapped guy, and I'm thinking of some ideas for a fundraiser.... Um. Yeah. I suck at this.