Swim to the Surface
Swim to the Surface
A note before you begin: I'm writing this from the safe shore. I lived through an abusive marriage, and by God's grace I left it—I'm remarried now to a gentle, loving man, and I am free. I share the hard parts only to get you to the hopeful ones. This touches on abuse and some very dark days, so be gentle with yourself as you read. And hear this first: if someone is hurting you, choosing safety is not a failure of faith. Your life matters to God, and it matters to me.
Have you ever felt like you were underwater?
Not the gentle kind of floating—the kind where the storm is roaring overhead, the waves keep pulling you down, and every time you claw your way up for a breath, another one crashes over you. Where your arms are so tired you start to wonder if it would be easier to just… stop. To sink.
I've been there. For years. And I want to tell you how I learned to swim to the surface—because you can too.
The Man who walked on water
There's a story in the New Testament I can't stop thinking about. The disciples are in a boat in the middle of the night, caught in a storm, when they see Jesus walking toward them on the water. Peter calls out, "Lord, if it's really You, tell me to come to You." And Jesus says one word: "Come."
So Peter climbs out of the boat. And for a few astonishing steps, he does the impossible—he walks on the water, in the middle of a storm, straight toward his Lord.
But then he looks around. He sees the wind. He feels the waves. He takes his eyes off Jesus and fixes them on the storm—and the moment he does, he begins to sink. "Lord, save me!" he cries. And here is the part that undoes me every time: Jesus immediately reaches out His hand and catches him. Not after a lecture. Not once Peter proves he's strong enough. Immediately.
That whole story is my story. Maybe it's yours, too.
The storm
For years, I was in a marriage that had become frightening. I was also fighting Lyme disease—the kind that went undiagnosed for eighteen years and left my body under siege—so I was drowning on every side at once. There was a season when the mere sound of my husband's voice would make my knees shake. I kept hearing God tell me to leave, and again and again I went back—out of fear, out of faith I was misapplying, out of not having enough money or anywhere to go. If you know that particular exhaustion—gathering your children quietly, slipping out to the car, and then somehow returning—I know it too. I lived it for years.
That was my storm. And like Peter, I spent a long time staring straight into it.
Stepping out of the boat
But I also had a coach in those years who kept pointing me back toward the surface.
He'd had a brutal childhood and turned all of that pain into fuel, becoming one of the most decorated natural bodybuilders in the world—but what I loved was that he coached from the inside out. When I first met him, I couldn't do a single push-up; the Lyme damage meant my brain wouldn't even send the signal to my arms. He didn't flinch. He said he could see the heart of a champion in me, the way a sculptor sees the finished statue hidden in the rough stone.
One day I watched him load a bar to its absolute limit and try to press it with his own strength. He couldn't. Then he said out loud, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me"—and lifted it. I stood there and wept, because I wanted to lift the impossible thing crushing me, too.
That became our whole rhythm. He'd set a weight in front of me I was sure I couldn't move, and remind me: before you lift, keep your eyes on Christ. It was never pretty—I grunted and groaned and tried not to swear in front of him—but I could always lift it. Always.
That is what stepping onto the water feels like. You do the thing you were certain was impossible—not because you're suddenly strong enough, but because your eyes are on Him.
When I looked at the waves
And then there were the days I looked at the storm.
When I fixed my eyes on the fear, the darkness, everything crashing around me, I started to sink. The despair would rise until I couldn't feel the surface anymore. I know exactly what it is to be Peter, mid-step, suddenly certain I'm going under.
Here is the truth I want to hand you from those days: the sinking always started the moment I took my eyes off of Him. Not because the storm wasn't real—it was terribly real—but because the waves were never the thing that could hold me up. Only He could.
The hand that caught me
And every single time I cried "Lord, save me," the hand was already there.
There was a strange, holy morning when I stood folding laundry and heard a voice, clear as a person standing beside me, say, "Burn your sheets." I brushed it off. It came again. And a third time. I finally carried the bedding out to the fire pit and burned it, not understanding why—until later. Sometimes God protects us before we even know what we're being protected from. Even when no one on earth seemed to be listening to me, Heaven was, and Heaven was reaching out its hand.
My grandfather, who had once told me I simply "needed to forgive," came to me the next morning with his head bowed after praying, and said the Lord had answered him plainly: "It's hard to forgive a horse if it's still standing on your foot." Even the people I was sure couldn't hear me, God could still reach.
That is the outstretched hand. You do not have to be strong enough to save yourself. You just have to reach for it.
How to swim to the surface
So when you're underwater and your arms are giving out, how do you actually swim up?
You fix your eyes on Him, and you take the next stroke. Just one. Then the next.
For me, that meant opening the scriptures—not as a chore, but as a lifeline—and letting them become His voice, steadying me, reminding me over and over how strong He is. So much stronger than my storm. When I couldn't hear anything over the roar of the waves, His words on the page would cut through and say, Keep your eyes on Me. I wrote those very words on my mirror, so I would see them every single morning. Because the second I looked away, I'd start to sink again.
It meant reaching for help even when I was terrified to. The first time I was ever brave enough to report what was happening, it led to a police-mandated separation—he stayed elsewhere while my children and I remained in our home, and for a while we even had to come and go separately. Around that same time, I sat in on an evening class about abuse and picked up a simple brochure that, for the first time in my life, gave me the words for what I had been living: the cycle of abuse. Naming it was its own kind of light breaking through the water. I was finally beginning to understand where I was.
It meant letting people help me, too—reaching for the human hands God sent, instead of drowning politely and alone. A friend who once shaved her head as she walked out of her own abusive situation inspired me; years later I shaved mine, looked in the mirror, and said out loud, "No more fear."
And it meant finally hearing what He had been telling me all along. Because you cannot dance differently while you're still letting yourself be stepped on. If the person who is supposed to love you most is the one you fear most, that is not a cross you're meant to carry in silence. Leaving is not a lack of faith—sometimes leaving is the faith. Know your worth. You are a daughter of God, and He is not okay with His daughters being harmed.
I reached the surface
I did leave—the hardest and most necessary thing I have ever done. And God carried me through it as surely as He held Peter above the waves.
Today I am safe. I am healed. I'm remarried to a gentle man. My children and I are free. The storm that once felt like it would drown us did not get the final word.
There's a poem I've loved for years—"Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou. I won't reprint it here; it deserves to be read in her own words. But it's about being knocked down by cruelty and lies and rising anyway, again and again—and it makes me want to choreograph a whole dance.
If you're going under right now
Please hear me. The wind is loud, but it cannot hold you up—and it cannot pull you all the way under while your eyes are on Him. So stop staring at the waves. Look up. Reach out your hand, to God and to the people He has placed around you, and take one stroke toward the light. Then another.
He is not waiting for you to be strong enough. The moment you whisper "Lord, save me," His hand is already there. It always was.
Keep your eyes on Him. And swim.
If someone you love is hurting you, please reach out—you don't have to carry it in silence. In the U.S., the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233 (call or text), any time, day or night. And if the darkness ever grows so heavy that you don't want to be here, please call or text 988 right away and let someone stay with you. You are worth saving. You are so deeply loved.
I love you.
Namaste,
Steffi
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