God Saving Me

Rosalie Youmbi, Contributing Writer

I always knew about God– I’m a Christian– I believe in God–but that was only because my parents are Christians and that was what I was raised to be. I never had my very own connection that truly made me believe in God until death almost overcame me.

One day when I was staying at my cousin’s house in White Oak we were bored and drowned in our sweat. It was scorching outside and there was no better way to cool down than going to the pool. I was totally unprepared, I had no swimsuit, no sunscreen, and no knowledge of how to swim. I had on my brown yellow striped dress on, almost like an old banana and my brown bow flats. I told my cousin this and he said, “It’s fine, just don’t get all of your body in the water.” I simply sighed and responded with an “ok”. With that, we started on our journey to the pool.

We had to walk to the pool which took 1,000 years and the heat that was burning my skin didn’t help at all which caused me to walk sluggishly. With the sight of the blue sparkly water approaching, I bolted to the entrance. As we entered the pool, my cousin, sister, and I went our separate ways. My sister was four, so she went to the kiddie pool; my cousin being 14 went to the 6ft pool; while me being 8 I just walked, wondered, and dipped my toes into the water.

As time goes on and more bodies start to come through, I walk over to the 6ft pools and I observed my cousin swim, being mesmerized questioning myself on why I wasn’t blessed or taught with the skill to swim. Shortly as I watched him swim I got bored, I continue walking past the bigger sizes of the pool and soon after I walked past the six feet, seven feet, and eight feet I ended up in the water. I fell in. Eight years old, 4’7”, can’t swim, and yet I was now in eight feet water.

Everything was slow, calm, relaxed. My body plunged into the water, the water hugging me, almost soothing.I turned my head around looking at all the other bodies in the pool. The brown legs, tan legs, pale legs, hairy legs, long legs, and short legs were all I could see. As I was getting deeper and deeper into the pool with the water swallowing my body, there was nothing I could do. No one saw me, I was invisible, I couldn’t swim, couldn’t yell for help, I couldn’t even help myself. There was no pain, my eyes didn’t burn from the chlorine, but instead, my eyes burned at the thought that this was it. I would drown and no one would save me until they found me. I felt free but I wasn’t I was being chained up by the water, there was no possibility I could get out of this.

I didn’t pray, but I just thought of God, not only God but Jesus and how with God’s love anything can happen, how God will always protect you and with that, I don’t know what came over me, but I had this strength. I pulled myself up, there was no fight, there was no pressure of the water pushing against my chest or around me at all. My eyes opened and I could see a silver ladder, it was like finding a key to a box of treasure. I used my scrawny arms and grabbed hold of the ladder. I pulled myself up and I was out of the water. To my surprise I was right, no one noticed I was in the water. There was no lifeguard, no one called for help, no one would’ve saved me, I wasn’t able to save myself, but with God giving me the strength to fight against my almost terrible fate, I was now out of the water.

I got out the water with no problems. I didn’t cough up my water, my eyes didn’t burn, I was fine physically. It was almost as if nothing happened and only I knew what happened. Mentally I was astonished I couldn’t swim and yet there was I was perfectly fine. There was only one explanation for all of this and that was because of God.

I sat in one of the pool chairs and recalled the moment that just happened. At that moment I truly had a connection with God, giving me a reason to believe and not the fact that I was born to a family that believed. At that moment I had no fear, I didn’t even fear death. The thought that God was always there for me and protected me allowed me to be at ease with any bad situation I thought of. I knew what it really meant to love God and to be a Christian.    

People may say that God isn’t real and that the human race made it up but with what happened to me, I knew that God was real and that he would always be there to protect me. I always keep what happened to me close to my heart and after we left to go to the pool I didn’t tell anyone about it. I didn’t feel as though it had to be voiced. It was my own little secret, my assurance.