I Can't Stand This: A Literal And Figurative Lesson on Excuses

 

Nestled in the heart of a Newaygo, Michigan, a small town of 2,500 people – if you’re being generous – is Kimball Lake, which is one of four bodies of water connected by underwhelming straits that allow residents to take their jet skis, small boats, canoes, and kayaks to all of the lakes in one go. The views of each lake are immaculate and memorable no matter what your adventures include and mode of transportation to get to each lake is.

Each summer, I try to take advantage of my time off from teaching 5^th grade to experience lake life at my parents Cottage, which sits merely 30 yards from where the subtle Kimball Lake waves kiss the shore. I always look forward to jet skiing, tubing, kayaking, and sitting in the boat, thinking about how blessed I am to experience another summer of cottage life.

Unfortunately, every godsend comes with a catch, a caveat. A buzzkill.

Water skiing: an activity every loves and can do almost effortlessly.

Except me.

James commands, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up,” and I have yet to identify a more humbling and spiteful moment in my three and a half decades of existence than water skiing. Humble myself? Water skiing has me covered free of charge, and there’s no lifting me up. Absolutely not. I’ve tried to get lifted up. I’ve waited for God to lift me up. I’ve waited for the boat to lift me up. I have tried telling God I believe in him and I believe in myself too. Maybe that’s the problem; God and I are both trying to lift me up like two men trying to lift a couch but counting at different times. Do you got me or do I get me this time?

Every time I’ve been humbled and try to get up again post-humble stage, God has not lifted me up. Am I angry at God? No. I’m angry at physics, gravity, and anything to do with getting dragged across the lake by a rope in shoes 10x your size shooting out from behind your heel bone and in front of your five toes.

I have spent numerous summers on Kimball lake, not only trying to get my entire body up on the water, but also watching every age and generation, from 8 years old to 61 years old, get up on one ski, two skis, backwards, forwards, with one hand and with two. I have watched nearly every cousin pull themselves up with perfect form in under three tries, multiple uncles drop one ski into the water with ease in the middle of the first lap around the lake, and every sibling transition from getting up to slaloming in and out of the wake like they’re some kind of Olympic downhill snow skiing champ. My family could raise a one-legged squirrel with epilepsy to get up on two skis before I could. As I write this, they’re probably raising that squirrel at this very moment.

Since 2018, I have felt the self-induced pressure to get up on the skis like everyone else. This pressure I feel does not come from my parents, siblings, or even the squirrel, but from me alone. Imagine this scenario: You just spent 45 minutes getting your arms ripped out of their sockets by a boat pulling the rope responsible for your amateur amputation, and once that nightmare is over, you spend the remainder of the day overhearing countless friends, family, and strangers in your vicinity talking about “dropping a ski,” “creating a larger spray,” and “jumping through a flaming circus ring.” Seriously? We’re all moving on to skiing with two feet on one SKI? Don’t mind me, I’m still trying to GET UP. Waiting on the second half of that “Humble before the Lord” verse. When do you plan on lifting me up? Because I’m used to the humbling part now.

From the front of the boat, I would hear the same pep talk from my dad and mom, listing off how to prepare for the initial pull out of the water:

“#1. Make sure the skis are shoulder-width apart.

#2. Act like you’re sitting in the water, but don’t squat too low.

#3. Let the boat pull you up

#4. Straighten your back and bend your arms just enough so it doesn’t pull you forward.

#5. Don’t overthink it.”

“Ok!” I shout back, which translates in my head to, “Right, go through every body part and make sure everything is perfect…oh, and make sure you also don’t overthink it.” Any activity that ends with ‘Don’t overthink this,’ does not deserve to be called an activity.

Am I the only one who thinks the phrase “Don’t overthink it” is synonymous with “Now I’m going to overthink it?”

It’s like when a sign says, “Don’t feed the pigeons human food.”

Now someone is going to feed their strawberry Pop Tart to the pigeons, and they’re all going to die.

The moment I’m told, “Don’t overthink it,” is the exact same moment I do overthink it because now I’m just overthinking overthinking; and when you start overthinking overthinking, you’ve just out-thought yourself into disqualification.

The lose-lose scenario becomes a reality when no matter how you behave in the water, the result is the same. The moment I sit back, relax, and not feed the pigeon by overthinking, it comes after me and attacks me. But if I do overthink it, I get arrested for trying to feed the pigeon. And by arrested, I mean pounded into the water like a rag doll who just pinched King Kong in the heinie one last time.  

How do people think this is fun? How do I not overthink when there are twelve different rules on how to get up alone? If I’m too relaxed, I’m a puppet whose strings are tangled up from being thrown into the box for the attic. If I try to focus too hard, my arms fall off of me like a loose tooth being ripped out from a slammed door and a piece of string. Loose tooth or puppet strings? Either way, I’m not ready for the humiliation.

I’ve also seen it from the perspective of knowing thyself and not even trying at all. From the perspective of an observer, watching others successfully get up, it’s even worse. I watch each cousin, uncle, mom, dad, sibling, and epileptic squirrel get up, riding the waves like a bunch of circus clowns walking on water. Jealousy naturally creeps into the brain, and his loud neighbor, Comparison, automatically invites himself with his own IKEA furniture – not just his bed; furniture for each room.

To make matters worse, you have all the time in the world to let the comparison of “I can’t get up but everyone else can” eat at you until your depressed on a sunny, 85-degree-and-0%-humidity kind of day. Why? Because from the moment they successfully get up on skis to the moment they voluntarily let go of the rope to end their successful routine on the water, all the observers get to watch is a skier circling the lake five times – there’s nothing unpredictable about it: no barrel rolls, front flips, flaming circus rings to jump through, or ramps set up to collect gold coins. Nothing to distract me from the painful reminder that I can’t and they can.

Maybe it’s just my ADHD speaking, but it gets boring real fast watching someone ride around on skis without any action othe    r than the occasional spray. At a minimum, the boat driver should spontaneously unleash a swarm of locusts from the back of the boat to see if the skier can maintain their poise and balance after getting struck two to 300 times. At least we’d get a show out of it.

Instead, I get to spend five to 10 minutes watching someone get predictably pulled around in repetitive circles by a boat, which in my opinion is less fun than watching the 3D polychromatic Pipes screensaver on a ’93 Dell Optiplex MXV.

The 3D Pipes screensaver from Windows ’95 ©screensaversplanet.com

Despite where my behind is sitting – comfortably in a Mastercraft chair letting my dry self watch others ski or reclining in an invisible chair in the water waiting wet and impatiently for the boat to lurch me above the water like Jesus walking on it, I literally and figuratively cannot stand the entire ordeal.

Though I heavily lean towards the hate side of the relationship, there is a hint of love for water skiing – for instance, when Dad does it, it is mesmerizing watching the waves spray when he makes a sharp turn back toward the wake. And when I manage five seconds standing up which is, as the pros put it, “the hardest part is over,” it does feel like quite an accomplishment.

Comparatively, life is often like water skiing; no matter where your sitting, it can be hard to face it when the ongoing narrative is that you’re only going to fall again and again. Meanwhile, you watch everyone around standing tall, as wave after wave does nothing to reroute you. Suddenly, everyone’s successes make you feel so small.

One thing I’ve noticed about water skiing through all of the repetitive failing is how powerful the failure is when that is all I focus on. It drains you. Physically, mentally, emotionally, you feel attacked. Can anyone fault me when I hilariously crash into the water with the grace of fly colliding with the windshield of a moving car? Failure never looked so explosive.

When I did fail, it was because I did not put to practice what I was taught. To become good at water skiing, it takes correct mechanics; to nail down the mechanics, you have to know what they are, and to know the mechanics, you have to be willing to be instructed on them. When I slammed into the water head first, or the boat dragged me through it, it didn’t matter how badly I wanted to get up. I had to follow the mechanics to a T. I had to execute the steps exactly the way they were given to me. When I fell hardest was when I didn’t believe I could execute the mechanics or was not attentive to what they were to begin with.

I had the same issue that Moses had when God hand-picked him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Yet, we consider him when of the greatest leaders of all time. Look at Exodus 3:11-4:14:

1.    1. Moses insults his importance by asking God why he is being chosen for such an enormous task (Exodus 3:11)

2.    2. God promises he will guide him – teach him the proper mechanics (Exodus 3:12)

3.    3. Moses questions whether people will actually believe or listen to him (Exodus 4:1)

4.    4. God demonstrates his own power and ability to guide the Israelites out of Egypt using Moses as his middleman (Exodus 4:2-9)

5.    5. Moses blames his own shortcomings and lack of speaking properly as a reason to not accept God’s invitation (Exodus 4:10)

6.    6. God once again reminds Moses of who he is and how he will work alongside Moses so he will know what to do (Exodus 4:11-12)

7.    7. Moses refuses to see the opportunity for what it is and begs God to send someone else (Exodus 4:13)

8.    8. God tells Moses he will send extra help through Aaron so Moses feels more comfortable with the challenge and opportunity God placed in front of him (Exodus 4:14-17)

Time and again, Moses throws excuses to God and God simply responds with resources and solutions that make the opportunity sweeter.

Often, I wasted my time out on the water with the same mindset Moses had. I would complain, argue, and pout because I couldn’t get up on the skis. I still can’t, but the point remains. Yes, I might fall flat on my face or I might get up on the skis and taste success after years of falling flat on my face. I could write 5+ paragraphs of why I hate water skiing and even watching it. I could say, “It’s not for me,” or “send someone else out on the water.” I could throw a tantrum on the water, blame it on God and my life being cursed, or berate myself for not doing something so “simple.” But they wouldn’t get me up on the skis – in fact, it would only distract me from executing each step successfully so I do eventually get up for longer than 8 seconds.

I could trust the person teaching me the mechanics, guiding me through the steps, and focusing on the success and lessons learned that could come of my skiing endeavor instead of filling my head with excuses to not jump in the water and give it another shot.

After God’s last attempt to convince Moses to go save the Israelites, promising him Aaron and the magic staff, Exodus 4:18 tells us “Moses went back to Jethro his father-in-law and said to him, ‘Let me return to my own people in Egypt to see if any of them are alive.’” In other words, let me go do what God is commanding of me. I’d like to believe that if Moses would have just trusted God in the first place, he would not have wasted so much time building up the courage to go.

Like trusting the mechanics of water skiing passed down to me, I believe trusting God can do us a lot of good and cut out the endless conversations filled with excuses and made up reasons to not follow through with God’s plan. Overthinking the mechanics often got me in trouble, and so did Moses’.

Hearing from God is not that complicated once you get out of your own way, and when you do hear from him, just do what he wants you to do instead of making excuses.

Otherwise, he might volunteer an epileptic squirrel to do what you could.