October 18. Remi Adeleke. Remi’s dad was an architect, an executive, and a Nigerian Chief, which made Remi a prince. But after his father passed away, Remi, his mom, and his brother moved to the Bronx. Remi said, “We went from having it all to not having much of anything.” Young and adrift, Remi turned to scamming, stealing, and selling drugs. But he did have one treat.
Once a month, he got to go to the movies. In 1995, when Remi saw Bad Boys, starring Will Smith, he realized he could be more than a thug. He said, “They were everyday guys trying to go out and save people.” Another movie introduced him to the Navy SEALs. When Remi was nineteen, a street-deal gone bad was the final nudge he needed. He said, “I gave up that street life for six months, and then I joined the military.”
At first, he scored low on the Navy’s vocational-assessment tests, and he didn’t know how to swim. Still he worked at it, retested, and qualified for SEAL training. “When I want something, I will run through walls to get it,” he said.
Remi was a Navy SEAL for seven years, and then went on to act in movies and advertising. Remi explains, “We live in a time when so many people are afraid to show their true colors.” He said his job was to “show them perseverance. Show them hope. Show them resilience.”
A man can fail and fail, but it’s failure only if he fails to learn from it.
All eyes were on the Senior Chief. “Prepare to enter the water!”
Remi stood there on the edge of the pool with sixty pounds of diving tanks strapped to his back, plus a twenty-pound weight belt around his waist. He wore fins. It had all come down to this moment. Pass the test he had already failed twice or his dream to become a Navy SEAL was over.
“You will tread water with your full dive load for five minutes. At no time during the five minutes will your hands touch the water. If they do, you will fail! After we call time, you will swim twenty-five meters to the north end on your stomach, touch the wall, then swim twenty-five meters back to the south end on your back. It is the only time when you can use your arms and hands.”
Looking down at the water Remi’s seven-year journey flashed through his mind. It had all started with the dream of a street kid from the Bronx who couldn’t swim.
For Remi, failure was only a failure if he failed to learn from it. Each time the Navy tried to shatter his dream, Remi gathered himself back up, learned, and fought his way back. He had done all he could to prepare for this moment.
“Enter the water!”
“ … last time I could barely keep my head out of the water; it was a fight just to breathe. Then I started swallowing water. It was like I was drowning.” That was not going to happen this time.
Remi thought about all the pool workouts he had done—when it was cold, when it was raining, when the pool area was packed, and when it was empty. He did it when he didn’t want to, putting all his failures behind him.
He did it for the next five minutes.
The second he hit the water, he resurfaced, kept his eyes closed, and centered himself. “I was one with the water.… The five-minute tread felt like two minutes. When I touched the starting wall, I peacefully climbed out of the pool as if nothing had happened.”
“Adeleke! Pass! It’s about time!”
Remi knew nothing was going to stop him now. Victory over his past failures was his. He was going to graduate!
Leaving the pool, he walked past a sign he had read countless times during his long journey. A sign that had become his goal, “Be Someone Special!”
“The LORD said to me, “Tell them, ‘The LORD says, Do people not get back up when they fall down? Do they not turn around when they go the wrong way?’” (Jeremiah 8:4 NET).
What past failure is holding you back? What lesson is the Lord trying teach you to turn that failure into victory? A man can fail and fail, but it’s failure only if he fails to learn from it.
Adeleke, Remi. Transformed. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2019.
Stalnecker, Jeremy. “An Amazing Story of Faith and Transformation.” Accessed July 16, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=Nl8x_smtVmw&fbclid=IwAR0UCA8l8aYup4TwiZ4zZHwDtUNtwuOZ2aWFj8ILwsEyqsEmQTC8o0hEugs
Story read by: Blake Mattocks
Introduction read by: Daniel Carpenter
Audio production: Joel Carpenter
Story written by: Paula Moldenhauer, http://paulamoldenhauer.com/
Editor: Teresa Crumpton, https://authorspark.org/
Project manager: Blake Mattocks
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