I was eight, standing with my parents and older brother, preparing to perform my carefully curated tumbling pass and trampoline routine for my competitive gymnastics team practicing in a city on the outskirts of Houston. Defying Gravity was the competition’s theme. In the crowd of leotards, bars, and backflips, I glanced up in the gymnasium and saw a running track hugging the ceiling above all the chaos. The concept was baffling to me— being at such a high elevation and just getting to watch everything unfold below. Even then, something in me felt small and awed, like there was something greater watching over it all.

I do not have many childhood memories. But this, I remember. Maybe awe, or something else—but something deep down inside of me knew that this gymnasium would become something significant later down the line. It was special in its own way. Competitive trampolining would turn into all-around gymnastics, which turned into cheerleading, which turned into high school color guard, all of which made me… me. But these memories stayed, quiet and steady, like seeds the Lord planted long before I’d understand their purpose.

Looking back, maybe that early glimpse of height prepared me for all the ways I’d keep chasing motion—flipping, leaping, tumbling—both in the gym and far outside of it. 

After competing, my family and I went to a waterway, unlike anything I had seen before. The city-girl, usually surrounded by skyscrapers and murky lakes saw something new and exciting. Concrete walls on either side, a large river flowing through the middle, and three friendly-looking drops in the form of rock slides were in the center of all of it. My entire family stood on the edge of one of the rocks, looking at the chaos below. Standing there, looking down at the water churning beneath me, I felt the same sensation I’d had staring at the ceiling track earlier that day—the dizzying awareness of height, of movement below me, of being pulled toward something bigger than myself. A mix of wonder and warning I didn’t yet know how to read. My $5 Walmart floaties and year-old watershoes gave me a false sense of security as I ran to the bridge just before the first drop. 

An older girl, maybe twelve to my eight, was helping push the kids down the slide. The last thing I heard before the quick waves pulled me under was Hold on!— then… darkness. Life as I knew it began to happen at shutter speed. The cool San Marcos water filled my ears as I tumbled through the river. I heard my mom scream and start to take off her bathing-suit cover up, getting ready to jump in after me. My knees scraped against the rocks as my watershoe floated downstream. 

Just as I start to picture my last breath, a hand grabs mine. A new mother, young and calm, grabs me and pulls me to the side of the river, saving me. I didn’t ever learn her name, but I still remember the steadiness in her grip—how, in a moment when I thought I wouldn’t surface, she reached in and brought me back to the world. Looking back, I see her as an answered prayer I didn’t know I’d prayed. 

For years, that memory lived quietly inside me— a strange blend of magic, fear, and the feeling of being small in a world much bigger than I understood. I never imagined I’d return to that town, much less that river. But throughout middle school and high school, that moment would come back to me in flashes—sometimes during a swim meet, sometimes while looking down from a high balcony, sometimes when I felt like life was pulling me underwater in other ways. It became a reference point, though I didn’t have the language for it then. A reminder of both fragility and survival. A memory I carried like a stone in my pocket—often forgotten, but always there. Maybe that’s how God works too—quietly, waiting for us to remember He was there all along.

Life circles back in ways we never expected.

When it came time to choose a college, I walked onto the campus onto Texas State University without thinking of that day. But something pulled at me… I was captivated by the river. Some sort of a soft sense of familiarity touched my heart. Like some part of me recognized the place before I did. I remember thinking that if a place could look that alive, maybe I could feel alive there too. Maybe college didn’t have to be a plunge into the unknown—it could be a returning. Maybe God was leading me back to finish a story He started years before.

The river became my safe place after I moved in. A homesick eighteen-year-old found so much comfort in the flowing waters, the grassy hills, and the smell of sunscreen. I laid on “Bikini Hill,” older now, watching the water curl around the rocks in the same places it once swallowed me whole. But this time, the fear was replaced by peace. The sun glimmered off the water’s surface, students floated in neon-colored tubes laughing, and the river became gentle—tender, even. It no longer felt like the place that tried to take me. It felt like the place that brought me back. 

People have called the San Marcos River sacred for centuries, and I understand why. Long before college students floated down it in neon tubes, it was a place of healing and legend. The Indigenous Coahuiltecan people believed the river’s springs were a gift from the gods — water that never stopped flowing, even through drought or despair. Later, San Marcos became known as the “City of the Mermaids,” and I can see why too. There’s something almost otherworldly about the way sunlight glimmers through the water, as if it’s alive with stories. Some say the mermaids still protect the river, keeping its spirit pure despite everything that’s changed around it.

Sometimes, when I sit at the edge of the water, I think about all of that — the myths, the miracles, the people who stood here before me. Maybe those stories aren’t so different from my own. Maybe we’re all just trying to rise from the depths, to be saved, to be seen. And maybe that’s what this river has always done — held generations of people who needed a place to breathe again. That same river became my refuge decades later. I went there to think, to breathe, to cry during the hard times. I sat, writing on the grassy edge, sunlight giving me goosebumps and the sound of the flowing water calming me with each lap against the bank. The place that once pulled me under now held me steady. In its steady rhythm, I began to recognize the voice of faith itself—constant, cleansing, alive.

There were days I’d stay for hours—watching ducks paddle across the shallows, listening to music that felt too emotional anywhere else, or just lying there long enough to forget the long list of things I worried I wasn’t good enough at. The river didn’t care about GPA or deadlines or how well I fit in. It asked nothing of me. It demanded nothing. It simply existed, and somehow that made it easier for me to exist too. Maybe that’s what grace feels like—unconditional presence.

And San Marcos—this city of hills, riverbeds, and familiar magic—became my home. Not just the place I live, but the place that grew with me. It holds the eight-year-old who tumbled through the rapids and the eighteen-year-old who sits by the water reading, journaling, healing.

I found versions of myself in this place I didn’t know I was missing—a softer version, a braver version, one willing to slow down enough to notice things like sunlight on water and the way my breath steadied when the wind changed. I found friends who loved the river as much as I did, people who made ordinary afternoons feel like pieces of a life I’d someday look back on fondly. I found a sense of belonging I didn’t know I was capable of feeling.

Somehow, the place that gave me one of my first frightening memories is the same place giving me my happiest ones. A full-circle moment I never saw coming, but one I’m grateful for every time I walk past the river and feel peace, not panic.

Somewhere in all of it—in the gym with the ceiling track, in the river that once swallowed me—San Marcos stitched the past and present together. The girl who once couldn’t stop moving— flipping, falling, fighting the current— can now just be still. And in that stillness, I’ve started to hear what I think the Lord has been whispering to me all along: Be still, and know that I am God. It’s as if He’s been present in every current and every climb, patiently teaching me to trust that I don’t have to keep fighting the water to stay afloat. Maybe even the mermaids knew what I didn’t yet—that peace was never found in running, but in resting where you were first called. And now, it feels like exactly where I was meant to end up all along… defying the gravity of my past. 

Maybe we all return to the places that shaped us—whether we realize it or not. Maybe the world is full of little circles waiting to close. Maybe healing doesn’t always look like victory; sometimes it looks like sitting beside the same river that nearly stole your breath away and realizing, years later, that you are still here, breathing.