How Scuba Diving Strengthened My Testimony

 I would be doing my Heavenly Father a great disservice if I did not share what a miracle it was that I was able to become scuba certified.  A few weeks ago, I shared my testimony of the atonement of Jesus Christ with the Sunday school class Sean and I teach.  I told them that in our moments of weakness and imperfection we can lean on Christ and he will make us strong where we are weak, perfect where we are imperfect.  I always associated this however with trials and with sin.  I'm sort of bummed out that I have not been using it to it's full capacity with other things that I struggle with in my life, I guess you could call those mini trials.  Our society is obsessed with perfection, and I tend to fall right along with it, and when I fall short of perfection I am hard on myself.  Because no one is perfect I tend to be hard on myself quite often.  Throughout this experience I learned that I don't have to be perfect, that if I lean on my Savior, he will help me!

On the first day of scuba class I said my regular morning prayers, but I didn't put as much faith as I should have in my Heavenly Father.  Even though I mentioned it to him asking that he would help me and keep me safe I didn't place my trust solely in him and to be honest I went to class really nervous and kind of terrified.  During my struggles out in the water not once did I remember to call upon him, to ask him for help, or even remember that he loved me and was going to take care of me.  I was just focused on myself, on how badly I was messing up, on how big of a failure I was.  I swallowed a whole bunch of sea water.  On my way home I was really shaky, I went to pick up Ely and went to switch out cars with Sean so I could take ours to the shop.   I decided not to go to the shop and go straight home because I was still feeling really sick.  At home I was scared I was going to pass out so I went to our awesome neighbors house and told her I was really disoriented and talking like a drunk person.  She and her husband were so awesome at dropping what they were doing, they took me to the ER and took care of Ely until we were finished there. I threw up on the way to the ER in front of my neighbor.   They couldn't find anything wrong with me other than chalk it up to dehydration. Talk about having a terrible day.  I cried, a whole bunch.  I think I needed to hit this rock bottom place.  Back tracking a little bit, I had been struggling with different aspects of my testimony for a while, nothing major, but I was having a hard time with a few things.  I remember having a lesson asking the Lord to give us trials because they help us draw nearer to him, and to pray for trials.  I remember thinking (immaturely) "Psh. No thank you, I just moved here with a dog, cat, and baby by myself. I'm good for a while".  After that lesson though I thought about it, and how we were placed here to be tested and to become better.  I would never become better if my life was always easy so I started to pray for trials.  I wouldn't call this day a major trial but it was enough to get me to rely on the Lord again.  

After we came home from the hospital, I asked Sean to give me a priesthood blessing.  I said many of my own personal prayers.  I had my first day again the next day to repeat and I knew that the skills I struggled with so much would not be any easier.  I am the type of person who needs to practice things over and over before I get them.  I didn't have any way to practice any of those skills until I arrived the next day at the class. I also prayed for a different instructor.  Not only was my prayer answered for being able to have a different instructor, my repeat of the first day was completely different from my first attempt.   It was like night and day.

On my repeat day, I was calm and even though I was nervous I was able to work through it.  I noticed a big difference in how not clumsy my hands were.  My body just did what it needed to do.  I remember placing my face in the water without a mask and breathing with the regular in my mouth and being able to do it in a calm fashion.  I wasn't scarred and I didn't feel alone.  That was not me, that was all Heavenly Father.  In the days that followed every time I felt nervous or like it was too much for me to do I would say a prayer and would be able to perform just fine.

At first I thought it was silly to acknowledge this, that so many people just function with simple tasks like getting scuba certified and here I am needed to receive help from The Almighty in order to make it happen.  Then I realized that that was part of my problem.  Even though my issues and weaknesses might not be valid to another person, they are valid to my Heavenly Father.  I need to call on him more, for the big things and the little things.  He makes miracles happen every day, for me being able to do this was a big one!