Drowning, Performance, and the God Who Never Asked Me to Save Myself

Water, river imagery, soft blues—gentle

There are moments in life that split us in two: the “before” and the “after.”For me, one of those moments happened when I was five years old.

I drowned in a river. And in those final moments underwater—fighting for breath, lungs burning, fear screaming—I felt something far heavier than water:

I felt unworthy of being saved.

So instead of reaching out, instead of calling for help, I did something no child should ever feel:

I asked God to erase me.

That moment carved something deep into me—an inner belief that I had to handle everything alone.

That love was conditional. That I wasn’t worth rescue. That I needed to earn my existence.

I didn’t know it then, but that one moment would echo for decades.

Drowning Didn’t End in the River

Subtle water ripple — symbolizing repeated patterns.

Fast-forward many years. No water this time. I was drowning again.

Working 23 hours a day.

Running a business.

Trying to keep a marriage alive.

Trying to “save” everything and everyone around me.

Trying to outrun failure and abandonment.

The river had simply changed shape.

The water was now responsibility. Expectations. Pressure. Performance. Perfection.

And a deep belief that I had to earn my worth every single day.

I was suffocating, silently, in plain sight.

The Lie Beneath the Waterline

Trauma teaches us patterns before we learn language.

The lie I carried was this:

“I must do everything alone. And if I can’t, it’s because I’m not enough.”

As a child, that lie kept me from reaching for help.

As an adult, it kept me in cycles of exhaustion and self-sacrifice.

Many of us repeat our first wounds without realizing it.

But Then Love Found Me

 Sun Light breaking through water from above.

Years later, I had another life-changing experience—this time not with trauma, but with God’s love.

The same God I asked to erase me met me instead with compassion so deep it rewrote me from the inside out.

I discovered something I had never known:

God never asked for my sacrifice.

Never asked for my drowning.

Never asked for my performance.

He wanted my heart, not my exhaustion.

And for the first time, I realized:

I didn’t need to save myself.

I only needed to receive.

The Return to Breath

The shift was slow but sacred.

I began seeing myself the way God saw me—as beloved, not burdened.

The frantic striving softened. The endless drowning cycles broke. Peace began to flow where fear once lived.

And my life—my creativity, my relationships, my health—began aligning with heaven’s abundance rather than earth’s scarcity.

If You’ve Ever Felt Underwater… You’re Not Alone

Many people never drowned in water, but they’re drowning in life:

in expectations, in achievement, in pressure, in “being everything for everyone”, in survival mode.

The river takes different shapes for everyone.

But the way out is the same:

Receiving a love that lifts you instead of demanding you prove yourself.

A Path Toward Healing and Breath Again

That’s one of the reasons I wrote Our Bodies as the Garden of Eden.

It’s an invitation to experience your body, your identity, your worthiness—not through trauma, or hustle, or religious performance—but through God’s love that was always there.

If you’ve ever felt unworthy of help, or like you’ve been trying to save yourself your whole life… this book was written with you in mind.

👉 Explore Our Bodies as the Garden of Eden

👉 Read more of my story in The River

Infinite love and blessings,

Nicholas