I Can't Swim But Water Has Saved Me: On OMI, Divorce, and the God Who Calms the Waves

I can’t swim.

Water can kill me.

And yet, I started a business about hope called “water” (Omi).

Not because I trust the water, but because I trust the One who calms it.

Water is a paradox — it can quench your thirst, or it can pull you under.
It can be the source of life, or the thing that overwhelms you.
It can baptize you, cleanse you, heal you…and it is the very thing that can drown you.

I don’t remember the exact moment during my divorce when I connected with the story of the woman at the well. I just know that something about her felt like me.

Maybe it was the way she carried her story like a weight on her back.
Maybe it was the way she was forced to avoid people — meaning isolation, never confrontation.
Maybe it was the way she came looking for one kind of water but left with another.

All I know is that when I found her, I fell in love with her.
And in doing so, I fell in love with Jesus all over again.

So let’s walk through this together. Because I have a feeling, if you’ve ever felt unseen, unworthy, or thirsty for something more, this small (but so large) Bible story is for you too.

The Woman They Wouldn’t Speak To

The woman at the well wasn’t just any woman.

She was an outcast, rejected by her own people.

She had been married five times, and the man she was with now wasn’t her husband. In her society, this meant she was considered immoral, disposable, someone men used but didn’t keep.

But her isolation wasn’t just personal — it was cultural.

She was a Samaritan.

Samaritans were a mixed-race people, the descendants of Jews who had intermarried with foreigners. To the Jews, they were impure, unworthy of worshiping the same God in the same places. Jews and Samaritans didn’t just avoid each other; they despised each other.

This is why Jesus’ choice to go through Samaria was so radical.

Jesus HAD to Go Where Others Wouldn’t

John 4:4 says Jesus “had” to go through Samaria.

But geographically, He didn’t.

Most Jews traveling from Judea to Galilee, as Jesus was that fateful day, would take the long way around, crossing the Jordan River to avoid setting foot in Samaritan territory.

Yet, Jesus had to go through Samaria.

Not because of geography. But because of grace for a Samaritan woman.

Because there was a woman at a well who had been cast aside, whose shame made her avoid her own people, who came to the well at noon — the hottest part of the day — just so she wouldn’t have to face the whispers, the stares, the judgment.

Jesus didn’t have to go there by human standards. But He had to go there for her.

So, He sat down at Jacob’s well — a well that had been in Samaria for centuries, a well built by their shared ancestor, Jacob.

This well was significant because it was the one place that both Jews and Samaritans honored. It was neutral ground.

And that’s where Jesus met her.

An Outcast, A Savior, and a Question

When she approached, Jesus did the unthinkable.

He spoke to her.

Jewish men didn’t speak to Samaritan women.
Rabbis didn’t speak to women in public.
Holy men didn’t speak to women with reputations like hers.

But Jesus did.

“Give me a drink,” He said.

A simple statement. No sermon. No judgment. No condemnation. Just a request.

She was shocked.

She asked how He, a Jew, could ask her, a Samaritan woman, for water. And then Jesus flipped, as He often did, everything upside down:

“If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” (John 4:10)

He said, you’re questioning my question when what you need to do is ask yourself. He said, you’re inquiring, but the answer has already arrived.

She came to the well for water. She didn’t expect to leave well herself.

From Shame to Testimony

When Jesus revealed that He knew her past — that He knew about all her marriages, about the man she was with now — He did not shame her.

He didn’t turn away in disgust.
He didn’t call her impure.
He didn’t tell her to fix herself before she could receive Him.

He fully acknowledged her story, her pain, and her need. And, He offered Himself — living water.

Water that didn’t just quench physical thirst, but spiritual thirst.
Water that wouldn’t leave her empty, longing, needing to return to the same broken wells she had been drinking from her whole life.
Water that filled her in a way that no man, no relationship, no status could.

And then, she did something remarkable.

She left her jar behind.

She came to the well carrying a jar.

She needed it.

It was her way of surviving. It was how she drew water, how she sustained herself day after day. The jar represented her routine, her expectations, the limitations of what she thought she could have.

She left it behind because even if she had taken it with her, it wouldn’t have been big enough to hold what God was giving her.

And I wonder, how many of us are carrying jars that can’t contain what God has for us?

• The relationship we keep holding onto, even though it’s draining us.

• The job we’re afraid to leave, even though God has called us higher.

• The approval we keep chasing from people who will never give it to us.

• The identity we’ve built around our trauma, afraid of who we’d be without it.

• The survival mode we won’t let go of, even though God is calling us to thrive.

We cling to what’s familiar. We think we need it. We think we can’t make it without it.

But Jesus is offering something bigger. Something deeper.

And the only way to receive it is to let go of the jar. She abandoned it. Because now she had something better.

She ran back to the very people she had been avoiding, the same town that had rejected her, and said:

“Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”

She had no formal education.
She had no religious credentials.
She wasn’t even certain yet — she just, finally, had a question.

And that was enough.

Because of her testimony, an entire village, who hated Jews, came to Jesus.

Water, Hope, and Omi

I can’t swim.

Water can kill me.

But I’ve come to understand that the water Jesus gives isn’t the kind that drowns you — it’s the kind that saves you.

The kind that lifts you up.
The kind that renews you.
The kind that takes the parts of you that were once filled with shame and turns them into a testimony.

That’s why I named my business Omi — water.

Because water is hope.
Water is transformation.

Water is proof that what was meant to destroy you can become the very thing that gives you life.

I started Omi because I know what it feels like to come to the well broken, burdened, and ashamed.
I know what it feels like to be thirsty for something deeper.
I know what it feels like to leave behind the things you once thought you needed, because you’ve finally found something better.

Hope is a decision.
Healing is a process.
But when you drink from living water, you never walk away the same.

So tell me, what’s the well you keep coming back to?

And when Jesus asks you for a drink — when He offers you something better — will you take it?

Will you finally leave well?

Because sometimes, the things we fear the most — the things that feel like they can kill us — are the very things God uses to save us.

Just like the woman at the well, you don’t have to be at what would feel like the end of your journey to be transformed.

You don’t have to be qualified to share your story.
You don’t have to be whole to be hopeful.

You just have to be willing to leave your jar behind.

What’s in your jar? Let’s abandon it and be well.