When my own strength wasn’t enough
“Try it again,” my water safety instructor shouted from the side of the pool, trying to sound encouraging.
It was the last day of my freshman year of college. I was treading water in the diving well of the campus pool before yet another attempt to retrieve two heavy bricks—sitting like lumps of lead 12 feet below on the floor of the pool—and then swim them to the surface with enough energy left to yell, “I have two bricks!” To add an extra element of difficulty, our professor told us that we couldn’t dive from the side of the pool; we had to begin our dive from the water’s surface. This test was one of a long list of requirements that we had to fulfill in order to pass the class.
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I had tried to power through and retrieve the bricks weeks earlier. Each time, I’d gotten close but had to drop the bricks just before reaching the surface. This was my last chance.
While I was in my best shape ever from the intense physical conditioning we’d undergone in the aquatics class, it clearly wasn’t enough.
While I was in my best shape ever from the intense physical conditioning we’d undergone in the aquatics class, that clearly wasn’t enough. I knew there was only one answer. In fact, I knew in my heart that in the face of limitation, there is always only one answer. I had to abandon a view of myself as mortal, struggling, maybe even prone to failure, and see myself from an entirely spiritual perspective. I’d learned in Christian Science that this spiritual, God-based perspective allows us to see things as they truly are and ourselves as we truly are: capable, strong, and unlimited.
For my university degree, I’d had to take classes in physiology, kinesiology, and anatomy—all of which are based on the belief that matter is the basis of life, that it can break down, be fatigued, limit our capacities. At the same time, I was attending a Christian Science Sunday School near my campus and was continuing to learn about my spiritual identity: that my life—and this is true for everyone—isn’t based on a physical structure of muscle, blood, and bones, but is actually derived from God, divine Spirit. This life is the inexhaustible source of all strength, endurance, and energy. I realized I had to decide which view of existence I truly believed was real.
During my years in Sunday School, I’d learned what it meant to pray, and had come to trust that God always answers our prayers. Not only had I experienced physical healings in the past, but I’d also witnessed others in my family finding healing through reliance on God and an understanding of our entirely spiritual being. So it was natural for me to turn back to these foundational ideas as I faced this final test.
My success depended not on personal strength but on God, whom the Bible calls “the strength of my life.”
As I prayed, it became clear to me that none of the exercise I’d been doing was going to get me past that last hurdle. My success in the brick-retrieval task depended not on personal strength but on God, whom the Bible calls “the strength of my life” (Psalms 27:1). I also thought about something Mary Baker Eddy wrote in a companion book to the Bible, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “To say that strength is in matter, is like saying that the power is in the lever. The notion of any life or intelligence in matter is without foundation in fact, and you can have no faith in falsehood when you have learned falsehood’s true nature” (pp. 485–486).
My prayer in the days leading up to my last chance in the pool was to grow in that direction—to abandon a sense of existence as material and to embrace the spiritual reality.
When the morning arrived for me to retrieve those bricks, I dove below the surface of the water—and gratefully came up with both of them in my hands.
“I have two bricks!” I shouted to my professor.
He smiled as he told me, “You passed.”