The day my daughter learned to trust me

My daughter, Leah was five. I was teaching school, but we were out for the summer. Leah and I headed to the pool to swim. She was still a little timid around water.  We were in the shallow end. She was splashing around trying to keep from getting water in her face.

She got out and was standing on the edge of the pool.  I moved into deeper water and positioned myself next to the edge and held out my arms.  “Jump in the pool,” I told her, “Daddy will catch you.”

She would have none of it.  “No, Daddy,” she whined. “I can’t.”

“Sure you can, Leah. You won’t get hurt. Daddy will catch you.”

This dialogue ping-ponged for several minutes.  Finally I moved closer to the edge. “Come on and jump, Leah,” I pleaded. It will be fun.  You’ll see.”

Holding her nose and closing her eyes, she finally summoned the courage to jump off the edge into my arms. “See, I told you, Daddy will catch you.  You can trust me.”

She was so delighted that I caught her and she had fun, that she spent the better part of the next hour jumping off the edge of the pool into my waiting arms.

Once she learned she could trust her Daddy, she overcame her fear of water and put her trust and confidence in me.

Our heavenly Father is like that. We sometimes fear trusting Him because we don’t know what His plan is going to require of us.  Once we learn to trust Him we discover that His plan is much better for our lives than our plan is.We learn to trust God more and more. We trust Him with our decisions and our trials and our insecurities and our fears. We learn to trust Him with our very lives.