The Marriage Boat..........

I have 4 major phobias in my life. Fear of heights, crowds, being surrounded by water and reptiles. I don't know whether its because of my height but when am on a height which is at least 2-storey building high and i look down my whole world seems to be spinning, so how would i explain being on a plane. For water I just fear being in the middle of water say a lake, river, sea or just being surrounded by water with nothing to hold on to. I don't know how to swim and i feel that is suicidal to be in the middle of it. Being in the midst of a large crowd and speaking gives me the jitters and for the last phobia ; creeping reptiles. For example a snake. I don't need to see it. All i need to do is hear of it and you find me running in the opposite direction even though its nowhere near me. I just don't wanna hear of it. It gives me the creeps. Of these phobias i cant tell which is worst.

Unfortunately for me one of these was to be overcomed very soon. The water part. Last Friday my husband and I visited Johannesburg zoo lake. It was just to see the ducks on the lake and probably feed them. Then later we would hung around a little and then go back home. After feeding the ducks for a while my husband said
"Honey why don't we try to have a boat experience today" I looked at him to see if he was kidding, well he wasn't. So i responded.  "OK, is there going to be someone with us like a boat guide or something?" i asked him. "No, there wouldn't." He responded. "Look at the other boats guys on the lake, they have no boat guide with them. You just need to paddle yourself." He replied. That response didn't quiet settle with me so i asked, "and do you per chance know how to swim?" And he responds by shaking his head. "C'mon honey its gonna be fun" and he was off, long gone to get our boat ready. I stood there for a while trying to decide. Whether to run from my fear as i usually do or follow my husband who for the moment had gone fanatic.

Well the husband won! There i was in the boat with him, we both hadn't been in a boat before how much more knowledge of steering one. We've never been in the middle of a lake surrounded by water, we both didn't know how to swim either and we were trusting our instincts. He had both oars so he was paddling. Soon we were able to move from the dock and yes that was quiet a success but for some strange reason we remained at one side of the lake for more than 5 minutes just going round in circles. And no there wasn't any strange current. The lake was very still and peaceful just that my husband couldn't move the boat.

I was dazed just going round in circles and quiet scared. When he tried to steer towards one end, we ended up in the opposite direction. We had to pause for a while and pick up the pace again. We were able to get the hang of stuffs after a while and we had fun doing so. In the midst of these events God taught me something interesting;

1. Marriage was like being in that boat.
2. We were newly married and none of us has been married before, thus no prior experience.
3. That i had to learn to trust my husband to steer us to our destination and not overturn us into the lake.
4. If there is no support from the other partner(meaning me) then there is the probability of we going in circles.
5. Since each of us couldn't see behind us we had to trust the other partner to tell us what was behind us.
6. We have to listen to the other partner on how to steer else we would crash the boat.(This particularly happened on one of the instances where i told him we were about to hit a pole behind him, well he didn't listen so we hit it. It wasn't a big hit though so we were saved.)
7. That everyone on the lake was trying to steer their own boat as it seemed best to them not as the other boat pal was.

In all it was a fun experience which thought me a lot and at the end of the day i was able to overcome my fear of water. Marriage is fun just trust your partner not to crash the boat.

Comments

  1. ..."Marriage is fun just trust your partner not to crash the boat" ... and ensure you always carry the lessons learned on this day throughout the coming years..

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