28 days ago, I pulled on my cap, adjusted my goggles and plunged once again into the depths of grace. On that day, grace took the form of the pool at the Rockne Memorial Gym for my first swimming workout in many, many years.
I grew up in the water. I don’t remember learning how to swim, probably because I was doing it before I could even understand what I was doing. My youth was filled with long days at the pool; from early morning swim team practices to late evenings being the last family to leave as the pool closed. I swam throughout high school and joined a club team to swim year-round.
I loved being in the water. Even when I struggled with my body image it didn’t matter once I entered the pool. Swimming allowed me to feel strong, powerful—to use my entire body, every muscle, tendon, breath for one purpose. Swimming came naturally to me. I wasn’t the fastest on the team, but built stamina, discipline, dedication and persistence through the endless laps and development of skills—the central dispositions of a swimmer. I can even trace the roots of my contemplative spirit to swimming sets of 500 free (20 laps). Sometimes, to keep my body on pace with long steady strokes and deep deliberate breaths, I would pray a decade of the rosary—the first half of each Hail Mary would end with the flip turn, and my return lap would conclude the prayer.
Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. [flip]
Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
I didn’t do it every time, but often enough my memories of swimming are closely tied up with prayer. In the hours in the pool I found space to talk to God—sometimes pleased to just survive the workout, but often inviting God into my thoughts as I reflected on the day.
In the years since high school, I have found myself back in the pool at different times—in college and grad school finding friends to join me during lap swim at the Rockne or Rolfs, in Chicago after grad school where I joined a Master Swim team at the YMCA. But there had been a pretty long hiatus since then as physical limitations, work relocations and other factors affected my overall spirit, and thus my desire and dedication to swimming.
I broke my leg several years ago and once I had the cast off I tried to return to swimming as a natural way to recover. But I was so weak that each movement, even in the water, brought with it waves of pain as my body tried to re-learn how to work. To cap it off, my gym's pool had built-in ledges and a pole instead of a ladder with rails. My leg was not strong enough to support me, and my arms were too weak and exhausted from crutches to pull me up. So after a few vain attempts to climb out of the pool, I had to flop over my belly on the deck like a fish and wiggle into seated position. It was humiliating. I tried swimming a couple of times, but it was very hard to come back from that.
As time went by, explanations for why I couldn’t swim turned into excuses, and I allowed my limitations to define me. When I moved back to South Bend, I tried to get back into swimming and to make it as easy on myself as possible I rented a locker at Rockne where I could leave my things. (I have an extra set of goggles, cap, and a suit in my gym bag in my car at all times). Yet again and again, I would allow excuses to win out: “It's been a really long day and I am too tired to swim. The dogs have been home alone all day. The pool is closing soon. It's cold out and I don’t feel like getting wet.”
However, a line written in my journal many times over the years kept echoing in my head: I am more myself in the water than anywhere else. And then last month, sitting in my office I felt a buildup of all of the tension from family relationships, work stress and physical inactivity and said to myself: Megan, just get in the pool.
So after work I drove to the gym. (I had to ask them to look up my locker combo). I got changed and walked out to the pool. I sat down on the ledge, adjusted my cap and goggles and jumped in. I pushed off, took the first few strokes and muscle memory took over.
I stretched out, reach, pull, kick. I found the rhythm: stroke, stroke, stroke, breathe; stroke, stroke, stroke, breathe. I felt muscles move in ways they hadn’t in years. I took it slow—mostly re-acclimating myself to the basics. And as I glided through the water, I remembered another line often written in my journals: I swim because I love myself.
My stamina was shot—I had to stop at every wall, catch my breath, drink water and stretch, so I only swam for 20 minutes, enough to feel pushed and active, but not overdo it. I felt exhausted, but exuberant. As I walked to the car, I texted my sister, “who just swam for the first time in a long while? This girl!" As I drove home, my caution in starting slow proved well-founded as every time I turned the steering wheel my arms burned. When I got home I was really sore, so I took Advil and stretched, with each movement an effort. But I somehow felt whole once again.
I’ve returned to the pool every Tuesday and Thursday since then, and in those hours in the water I’ve rediscovered swimming as a spiritual discipline. Swimming—each stroke, each breath—requires intentionality, effort, discipline, until it suddenly clicks and the rhythmic flow of strokes, kicks, breaths, glides, flip turns, unleashes something profound.
There is something about the surrender, the giving over of myself to something I cannot entirely control, predict or conquer. I may feel fine one lap then an awkward flip turn or ill-timed breath fills my lungs with water and leaves me a sputtering and gasping mess. But it is allowing me to return to the habits and practices learned in my youth, the basic discipline of swimming that transforms the water into a place of freedom, where I am not limited by physical, emotional or mental constraints, but I am myself. And I swim.