Recipient of Houston Baptist University's Danny Lee Lawrence Award in April 2019.

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I dream that we're on a boat out

in the middle of the ocean, no land in sight.

The waters are calm, and we steadily rock

from side to side in a vast expanse of blue.

We're leaning on the railing of the bow,

and I'm too afraid to tell you

that the water scares me.

Drowning has always been one of my greatest fears.

I don't enjoy sand between my toes

and the beach is pretty when seen from a distance.

It's water up my nose as a kid,

my dad canonballing into the pool

and the impact making me almost drown

because I'll always be shorter

than the "five feet" side.

I can't tread water, but if Peter could,

I apparently can walk on it.

Don't know about you, but

distance is terrifying to me.

From the top of a building

to the bottom of the ocean floor.

What a road looks like when you're

driving in the middle of nowhere

and all you see of a town called Needville

is one gas station off of the freeway.

Loving someone so far away

that it feels unreal, fragile, hard to grasp.

I hate heights, the water,

open spaces instead of closed.

There is something so utterly terrifying

about being open, being vulnerable,

opening the door and not knowing what will come in.

When I sit in a restaurant, I choose the seat

at the table where I can see the door.

I've never lived through a life-threatening situation,

but the instinct is in me, the fear

of possibility is so, so nerve-wracking.

I can't study in the student center, my back exposed.

I have to sit in my dorm room, my back to the wall because that's where I pushed my bed,

and I can see my own door because,

even where I feel at home, I like closed spaces.

Something else that is terrifying: trusting God

because there is no greater distance.

He isn't something I can touch or see, yet

he lives in everything, in you and in me,

in the hands that made this boat,

in the water that's close enough to touch,

blue enough to be pure and crystal clear,

in the sky that has always made me afraid

instead of making me want to touch it.

I have never wanted to be an astronaut.

The greatest mortal distance is that of the stars,

and I have never wanted to explore them.

"Don't you want to see what's out there?"

No, it frightens me beyond belief,

freezes my blood and quickens my pulse.

If I leave the ground, what if I never come back?

If my back is pressed against the wall,

nobody can stab it.

But, here is the thing.

I dream we're on a boat, and I lean against the railing

because you say the water is beautiful

and that I should come take a look.

I get up from where I'm sitting, right in the middle

because that's where it's safest,

because I'm comfortable with myself, with you,

and, most of all, with God.

The water is beautiful and I might still be afraid of drowning, but

fear means nothing. Choose faith, instead, and you can still be afraid

because that's normal, that's human.

We are human and alive.

There's so much blue around us, so much blue inside of us,

but one doesn't have to sink the other.

A voice in my heart that sounds like yours but sounds like him:

"Come. Take my hand. Walk on water."