It is no secret that if you know me you will most likely have heard my dislike of my high school experience. I wouldn’t say it was awful for any of the reasons many of my peers suffered. I was reasonably logical and where I lacked in curriculum understanding I was able to compensate through work ethic. When a teacher told me all I had to do was show up and do the work and I would pass, I took them at their word. I just had a general dislike for all of the inefficiencies of the schooling process. I have never been comfortable with the idea of just putting in time. It probably doesn’t surprise you that I figured out how to stack my credits so that I could graduate midway through my grade eleven year. When I left high school I attended a year of university for basic business administration through what was formerly known as “The applied business technologies certificate program” offered at Abby (Abbotsford) Collegiate or for us old schoolers CTC). It was a brilliant program but I still struggled with the “going to school thing”. I promptly completed my required time with my sights set on getting into the fashion design program located in the same building just below where I was currently taking classes. I thought that perhaps I was just missing the creative outlet part. I began the first semester of that and I also hated it, and worst of all this time I had paid my own cold hard cash for it. During this time I worked at McDonalds as the opening window (till in the lobby) and evenings at a spa as an assistant/receptionist. Working was far less torturous than school so I decided not to continue with school until I could refill my personal reserves and get a clearer picture of what I wanted to do with my life.
It was also during this time that my husband and I met and decided shortly after that we were going to team up on this game called life. We planned to get engaged as soon as my mom didn’t have to sign me away (joking but also not joking) and then be engaged for a year because we didn’t want to look crazy, I am sure a year helped that lol. I had an impressive amount of jobs during this stage of my life. I worked at a butcher shop, spa, sold spa products through direct sales company, heavy duty mechanic on occasion, helped in the church running Sunday school and VBS programs, freelanced with my business certificate trying to help entrepreneurs organize their businesses (which my ladies who help me with my business stuff will think is hilarious). I wanted to make more money and work less hours than all of them in a week. I also wanted to have a family in about the time it would take to go back to school and get a degree. So I started googling the “jobs that pay the most with the lowest cost and shortest time for schooling”. My results came back with a lifeguard/swim instructor.
It was perfect. Courses ran over weekends and evenings and they were broken up so I could pay for them in chunks at a time and then afterwards I would be able to get a job with a higher paying entry level and also work for a union with benefits and all that jazz. Growing up in the house of a couple of entrepreneurs I have heard of this magical thing called “benefits” whenever my mom had to pay for our orthodontist appointments. I didn’t really know what they were but I knew that people talked about them like they were something a girl ought to have. So I jumped right in, hehe pun absolutely intended.
I was definitely the old person in the group of 16 year olds who had completed their swim kids levels and were signed up by their mothers. I hadn’t been dancing like I was (I had quit dance to get a “real” job hahaha) so even though my body hadn’t visually changed much physically I was in deep water when it came to the physical endurance required to complete the courses. Yes the swimming puns will absolutely be continuing. Long story short I completed my training over approximately 6 months and was hired a couple weeks before my wedding. Miss Mackie- remind me to tell you about my first training shift my alarm didn’t go off for, that is another story for another day. Now once you get hired we are required to keep our courses up to date and complete two mandatory in-service training/physical expectation requirements. The requirements are difficult and if you are doing your job correctly you should be able to prevent ever actually having to use the carries and the distance swims. So in my head I was able to get myself properly freaked out about having to perform in front of my new work peers.
After getting out of the pool after a set of lessons I was lamenting to one of my co-workers, who I had huge admiration for and who had been doing this job for a long time, that I was losing sleep at night stressing over completing the brick carry. For you non swimmers out there it is when you have to retrieve a twenty pound brick from the center of the deep end and surface with it, (just an FYI, the brick is heavy enough to hold you to the bottom of the pool and there is no strength of flutter kick that will get you off the bottom and to the surface) get it up over your shoulder then swim a distance for five meters with it to the edge of the pool with all your peers watching around you. I should also mention that I have a fear of drowning that I have been working on since I was in preschool swim kids. I thought I was doing my due diligence freaking myself out. After listening to me complain for a reasonable amount of time my colleague walks away from me and disappears into our equipment lock up. He reappears with the infamous “Brick”. He walks past me and throws it into the center of the deep end. He looks at me and says “sounds like you need to practice”. “Are you serious, I just got out of the pool” I replied. “Well I am dressed and it’s not safe to leave it down there” he also knew I was a stickler for following the rule -all the equipment needed to be accounted for and put away.
I slipped into the water again and swam out to the center of the pool and looked down at the brick wobbling in the reflection below my feet. With a final deep breath I tucked and did my quickest surface dive to the bottom of the pool feeling the pressure popping my ears with a few extra whip kicks I reached the bottom. Wrapping my fingers around the brick I used the weight of it to pull my feet down to the gritty bottom of the pool. Luckily I knew from years of ballet a strong jump off the tiles would result in less distance I would have to generate my own power mid water. To me this was mentally the hardest part. Where the momentum from the first push off faded and you needed to choose whether you were going to kick or let the brick bring you back down to where you had just left. In this moment you kind of floated briefly, the proverbial fork in the road. I struggled the last few meter but the strategy I had been taught came back and the decision to push past the feeling of discomfort grew stronger the nearer I came to the surface. Finally my head emerged from the pool and I puffed over to the wall. Breathing hard and smiling from ear to ear I threw the brick over to my mentor as I gripped the wall and just let the stress leave and the joy flood in. I was looking up at the roof of the pool when out of the corner of my eye I watched my co-worker pick up the brick and continue in the opposite direction of the supply closet and lob the brick back into the pool. My head whipped out of the water in attention to trying to understand what was going on. “Good, you did it once. Now you need to do it again at least ten times” His voice was encouraging but firm. I didn’t fully understand at first but as I continued over and over again I got more and more comfortable with the process. I got faster, more strategic and more importantly I gained confidence because I knew I could absolutely accomplish this in front of my peers. In fact I started to look forward to showing off.
I recently shared this story with my daughter who is struggling with her reading. She has said that she feels embarrassed that she is not as advanced as she would like to be with her reading. When she feels embarrassed she doesn’t want to practice because she associates the practicing with the negative feeling. I know there is nothing glamorous about practicing. Many of us would rather pay a fee or get wrapped up in a program or anything else including laying in bed tormented by the thing they are dreading doing rather than putting in the consistent effort it takes to be bad at something and only see minor improvements. It is hard. Just like my experience, sometimes we need someone to come along and encourage us to stink at something long enough to see even the tiniest amount of progress. I would like for LOFT to be that for our families.
At LOFT we dance. It is the thing we all love and have in common with one another. I think that the reason the environment resonates with our people is because at the core of LOFT we are trying to encourage our people to live the life that God is calling them to. Those lives are filled with things that will suck, be hard, not fair and on top of that we will be bad at. But just like learning something new in class, if we keep picking away at it sooner or later we will develop some strength and along with that we develop in our stamina to withstand the growth period. We want to encourage and cheer for you!
“Dear God, please help us to recognize the areas of our lives that you are calling us to develop some grit in. Help up to take the steps a little each day in the direction that you require from us. Please provide us with our own coaches and the right attitudes to coach our friends and families too. In your name- AMEN”