Going Solo
I stepped into my canoe and knelt down. I pulled the webbing strap to lock me in and I took a deep breath before paddling onto the Youghiogheny River. This was my moment. I had worked so hard to get to where I was. The semester before I had earned a canoeing instructor certification. I had spent all of my free time training to become the best white water solo canoeist that I could be. When solo canoeing you kneel in a canoe and use a one blade paddle to maneuver without the help of a partner. White water canoes turn on a dime and it is quite hard to travel in a straight line. Everything has to be done by one person. I wanted so badly to be able to solo paddle real white water. I spent hours fighting against currents to get stronger, repeating the same maneuvers hundreds of times until I had them perfect. I watched videos and read books to really understand my sport. I laid awake at night mentally practicing skills. Canoeing had consumed my life and all of my hard work had paid off. I was invited to join a white-water rafting trip on which some students would be learning to guide rafts. I would be canoeing along with them. I felt like I had arrived. I had the skills that I needed and I had an opportunity to put them to use.
My day on the Youghiogheny did not go as well as I was hoping. I dropped into my first rapid and quickly flipped my canoe. I grabbed my canoe and swam to a rock that would allow me to dump the water out and strap myself back in for the next rapid. I kept paddling and right as I got to the bottom of the second rapid, I flipped again. This was how my whole day went. I flipped in almost all of the rapids that I paddled. Sometimes I swam twice in the same rapid. I recognized that I was way in over my head early on during the day. I fought back tears as I struggled to keep my boat afloat. I knew that I was failing in front of my friends at something that I had poured my life into mastering. I felt like a complete failure. I was embarrassed and I wanted to be done.
I had become blinded by my own desire to go solo that I had failed. Swimming the 7.5 miles of the lower Youghiogheny was a way for me to be reminded of my own individual weakness. The next day, I was put in charge of captaining a raft. This meant that I was responsible for giving directions to a team and for navigating the river. The captain steers the raft through the rapids and helps the other people know what to do. To my surprise my run of the river was nearly perfect. Every rapid that I spent in the captain’s seat I executed perfectly. I navigated the right line in all of the rapids. It was so encouraging to have some success.
This story illustrates something that I am coming to understand more the longer I live. We are created to be people living in community. When we have people around us who can support us and make up for our weaknesses then we are stronger. Likewise, when we try to do things on our own, we often set ourselves up for failure. Ecclesiastes 4:12 explores this idea. It explains how an individual is easily broken, but when there is a group, we are stronger. It is essential that we surround ourselves with people who can join us in the things that God is calling us to. We need people who can support us in our weakness and who can give us opportunities to use our strengths. Life is better when we are not trudging forward alone. We have much greater potential when we have good support. When we are united, we can succeed where we would otherwise fail as individuals.
This lesson has been one that I have been keenly aware of in this COVID time. I have felt significantly more isolated than I normally do. I know that I am not reaching my full potential and that life would be so much richer with community around me. It is hard to know how to address this issue. This is a tension that I wrestle with often. I have tasted a life full of community but I am living without that now. I hunger for people around me to experience life with me in a way that we can spur each other on to reach our collective potential. I need community.
I would like to end this post with a few questions and I encourage you to take some time to reflect on them. First where do you see community in your life during this COVID season? Second, is there anyone that God is calling you to be in community with so that you can collectively thrive in life?
