Keeping your eye on the blue line

She was looking at me as if I shouldn't be there.

I had asked her to share her lane with me, as every other lane was taken, and she declined. I was there to do laps in the pool just as she was, but she didn't want to share.

Now I was swimming two lanes down from her in another lane that some lovely person had agreed to share with me and out of the corner of my eye, I could see her watching me and it was a clear message - this was her territory and she was not impressed by me.

"How can I do this?" I thought. After a pretty stressful couple of months, the doctor had told me that swimming was great for stress. So here I was - trying to release some stress and enjoy my time in the pool before picking up the kids from school and all I could feel was the awkwardness of someone disdainfully staring at me. Not only that, but there were three teenage boys in another lane who were making their colourful language heard throughout the pool complex.

I am never coming back here. I knew this wouldn't work. I hate this. ....These were the thoughts going through my mind. Not exactly the thoughts I wanted to be thinking during some time out!

But as I continued to push and move through the water, I started to focus on the blue line at the bottom of the pool. I focused on my arm strokes, my kicking, my breathing..and on the blue line. Suddenly I realized all noise was a complete muffle and I was no longer aware of other people watching me and what they might think of me...it was as if it was just me and the water and the blue line.

And then I saw it!!! As I followed the blue line down the pool, it led me to the deep end....and painted on the wall at the deep end for me to see my goal was a black cross.

You see, when I stopped focusing on the noise and the looks and the opinions of others, I could swim lap after lap after lap - and I enjoyed it. I began to feel my mind relax and my body got into a rhythm and I could feel the stress melt away as I focused on the path that was my blue line and the cross that was set before me.
The word of God says:

"Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you." Proverbs 4:24

"Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us,  fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. " Hebrews 12:1-2

It is so easy to get caught up in the noise of the world and the opinions of others. But..if we throw off these things that entangle us and tie us down and persevere to follow the path set before us -  our body and soul fall in rhythm with the Spirit and our minds relax as all things become muffled by our eyes fixed on our Saviour.

I am going back to the pool. I am ready to persevere again. I am ready to drown out the world around me and keep my eyes fixed on the blue line.