Twenty years ago, I sat on the edge of a dive boat in Jamaica, oxygen tank strapped to my back, waiting for the signal to fall backward into my worst nightmare. The ocean—my deepest fear since watching Jaws as a child—churned below.
I shouldn’t have been at peace. But I was.
This morning, God used that memory to show me why my body hurts so much despite giving my life to Him.
Two months shy of my 48th birthday, my body is a catalog of failures. Fractured hip that never healed right. Fractured neck vertebra that sounds like gravel whenever I turn my head. Arthritis has colonized my joints like an occupying army. Stenosis. Torn rotator cuff. Torn labrum. Torn meniscus. Abdominals, torn decades ago that never healed right after surgery, send lightning through my chest with every deep breath. Each morning, I wake up and take inventory, wondering which betrayal will scream loudest today.
Maybe you know this inventory. Maybe you have your own.
But the worst part isn’t the pain. It’s how it leaks out. Sharp words to my wife. Impatience with my children. That barely-controlled rage at the grocery store clerk who’s moving too slowly. Or the car in the fast lane doing 25 mph.
I try to overcome those failures every morning as I perform my spiritual checklist:
- Reject sin in thought, word, and deed
- Invite God into my soul
- Offer my suffering to Him
I nail the first two. But that third one? “Let Jesus take the wheel” sounds beautiful until you’re white-knuckling through another sleepless night, neck and shoulders frozen stiff, terrified this may be your new forever.
This morning, I finally admitted the truth: “Lord, I don’t know how to let go.”
His response came as sharp and sudden as my physical pain. Not in words but in memory:
The woman who would become my wife, eyes bright with excitement: “Let’s get scuba certified!”
Me, terrified of water since age seven, drowning in my own yes, “Let’s sign up tomorrow,” then pouring myself three fingers of liquid courage while she researched dive shops.
Jamaica. Storm season. Waves that had every other dive master shaking their heads. Except Jimmy. “Perfect day for courage,” he grinned.
The boat pitched. My stomach lurched. My wife laughed. Thirty feet below, my greatest fear waited with teeth.
But sitting on that edge, moments from the backward plunge, something shifted—not the fear—that remained, pulsing; but alongside it, a strange surrender. A giving up that wasn’t giving in.
With the area clear, Jimmy pointed at me. “Go!”
I fell back.
Those nanoseconds stretched eternal.
Then: impact. Submersion. And instead of death: wonder.
A world hidden beneath my fear, coral gardens swaying in underwater wind, fish like living stained glass, silence and joy so complete it felt holy.
In that underwater cathedral, I finally understood what Paul meant: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). I’d been trying to be strong enough to handle my pain. But beneath the surface, covered by water I couldn’t control, I discovered that weakness—true surrender—was the door to His strength. “For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10).
That’s what He showed me this morning.
My collection of breaks and tears and chronic betrayals is my ocean. I’ve been sitting on the edge, terrified, trying to understand intellectually how to let go.
But you don’t “think” your way into surrender. You fall back. Not literally. But spiritually. Daily. Moment by moment when the pain crests.
Fall back into the One who waits beneath the surface of suffering, ready to show you wonders you’d never see from the boat or land.
I’m still learning this backward dive. Some days I manage it. Other days I’m still stuck on the dock, or paralyzed at the boat rail. But each time I fall back, even for a moment, I glimpse that other world. The one where pain becomes a doorway, not a prison. Where every fractured bone, every torn muscle, every sleepless night becomes part of the diving equipment. Not what drowns us, but what He uses to take us deeper.
Maybe you’re sitting on your own edge today. Different ocean, same fear. Different pain, same resistance.
But we aren’t meant to suffer through this alone, either spiritually or physically. Peter knew about sinking; he’d done it himself when he tried to walk on water. He also knew about being caught. Maybe that’s why he could write with such certainty: “Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you” (1 Pt. 5:7).
What if we fell back together? The Lord asks.
Author’s Note: I’ve been collecting these moments of surrender, mine and others’, in a series of short stories called Everyday Graces: Stories of Faith in the Ordinary. They’re glimpses of what happens when ordinary people stop clinging to their suffering and fall back into mystery. If you’re ready to explore what’s beneath your own surface, I’d be honored to have you join me.
Photo by Matt Hardy on Unsplash
