Submission (Part 2)

   Here I was, standing naked in my bathroom staring at the cold water as it hit the bathtub with full force. One-hundred thoughts crossed my mind. "Why am I going to make myself suffer this way? What is the point to this insanity? Can I use a life line and call my mother for this one? Just take a hot one, no one will ever know."
I set my timer to five minutes and I jumped in. WOW! It was cold... not so bad. I wet my arms and my legs. Then I turned around and let the water run down my back. I thought, "This should be easy Elsa, you do cycle showers almost everyday." But as that thought left my mind, so did every bit of common sense that I had in it and I began to feel pain all over my body as I screamed and yelled from the top of my lungs. My heart was racing while I stepped in face first into the freezing water, I gasped trying to catch my breath. It wasn't words coming out, it was groans, whimpers. From a hundred thoughts to a thousand, I felt super high all of a sudden and almost believed that I was watching myself go through this. "Am I having flash backs from back in the days when I used to party? Is that stuff still in my system? Why? Why? Why? Is it alright if I cry? Oh no, my tears are frozen and they don't want to come out!!! Help me, please, someone.  What am I saying? I think my bones are shattering. I am never doing this again. I kind of like this. I am nuts enjoying pain this way. Shut up. Get yourself together and take it. NOOOOOOO!"
    I soaped up and rinsed with only two minutes that had gone by and I knew I could stand it no longer. I wanted to turn the water to hot, but my body did not respond to my brain's wishes. Each second I groaned louder and louder and for some reason a bible verse crossed my mind.
Romans 8:26 "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans."
And this was true. At that very moment I felt vulnerable and weak, but my groans were as those of a powerful beast that lived within me. A beast that was fighting not the cold water, but my flesh. It was fighting my flesh so it would submit to this process of endurance. This is when I thought I had lost my mind completely because I started to laugh like a crazy woman, jumping under the coldest stream of water that had ever touched my skin. ALARM, ALARM, ALARM. Yes, my timer finally went off and so did the water.
   Now, sitting down on the edge of the bathtub wrapped in a big beach towel I tried to gather my thoughts and analyze what had just happened. "Why did I feel so energized and different?"