The scene I remember most is when the family and Teddy's grandparents were at the beach. Teddy and his father were riding the waves and the father told Teddy that he was ready to swim out to the barrels. These barrels were quite a distance from shore and marked the place beyond which it was unsafe to swim. They were about half-way to the barrels, and I'll pick up the narrative at this point.

"... Teddy thought the barrels still looked a long way off, and the beach was so far behind he could hardly recognize his mother and Bean sitting on it. His arms were beginning to ache, and he was feeling out of breath. What if he started to drown, he thought? What if he called for help and his father, who was a little ahead of him, didn't hear? What if a giant octopus swam up from below and wrapped him in its slimy green tentacles?

"But just as he was thinking these things, his father turned around and treaded water, waiting for him.

"'How about a lift the rest of the way?' Mr. Schroeder said. So Teddy paddled over and put his arms around his father's neck from behind, and that was the best part of the day for him and the part he remembered for many years afterward.

"He remembered how the sunlight flashed off his father's freckly, wet shoulders and the feel of the muscles working inside them as he swam. He remembered the back of his father's head and the way his ears looked from behind and the way his hair stuck out over them. He remembered how his father's hair felt thick and wiry like a horse's mane against his cheek and how he tried not to hold on to his neck too tightly for fear he'd choke him.

"His mother said bad things about his father. She said that he had no get-up-and-go and that he was worse than Grandpa Schroeder already, though thirty years younger. She said he needed a swift kick in the pants and things like that. And Teddy knew that his father did things that he wished he wouldn't, like drink too many cocktails and drive his car up on the lawn, and come to kiss him and Bean goodnight with his face all clammy and cold.

"But as he swam out toward the barrels on his father's back, he also knew that there was no place in the whole Atlantic Ocean where he felt so safe."3

Maybe now the old hymn makes more sense.

I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore,

Very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more.

But the Master of the sea heard my despairing cry;

From the waters lifted me, now safe am I.

Love lifted me. Love lifted me. When nothing else

could help, love lifted me.4

You see, there are times when we can't even swim anymore. We see him out there. We want so much to swim toward Him. But we can't or won't or don't even care anymore.

But even then He lifts us.

And we are safe.

1. John Killinger, "Recovering from a Bad Beginning," a published sermon, January 1, 1989.

2. James Rowe, "Love Lifted Me," Baptist Hymnal (Nashville: Convention Press, 1975), no. 462.

3. Frederick Buechner, The Wizard's Tide (San Francisco: Harper and Row Publishing, 1990), pp. 45-46.

4. Rowe, Ibid.

*From The Wizard's Tide by Frederick Buechner. Copyright (c) by Frederick Buechner. Used with permission from Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., San Francisco.