Me and most of my coworkers.

I know I’ve appeared rather “sleepy” in my writing lately. In fact, I have written a lot, but not posted any of it yet because it’s all still rolling around my insides and I don’t trust it for the time being.

I believe these words belong to Napoleon (except his were masculine) and today I apply them to me… When I unleash my fury of words, I will be aiming to take out a few mountains.

"If we maintain the open-mindedness of children, we challenge fixed ideas and established structures, including our own. We listen to people in other denominations and religions. We don’t find demons in those with whom we disagree. We don’t cozy up to people who mouth our jargon. If we are open, we rarely resort to either-or: either creation or evolution, liberty or law, sacred or secular, Beethoven or Madonna. We focus on both-and, fully aware that God’s truth cannot be imprisoned in a small definition."

- Brennan Manning

Me, a Fish & Emmanuel

I’ve been wanting to write down my fish story properly this week, so here goes [pulls keyboard onto lap]…

I was about 5 years old. I still had a speech impediment and didn’t know it. I loved catching green anoles, spiny lizards, and toads. I wasn’t afraid of handling creepy things like earthworms, especially when it meant catching a fish on PawPaw’s farm. 

Or rather, helping someone else catch a fish, because I had never caught one before. I had seen Dad catch them. PawPaw and Uncle Pete, too, of course… they were fishermen types. All these men collectively taught me that fishing wasn’t all the excitement I thought it was. I had to sit. I had to stay quiet. Not just for 3 minutes, either. For 10 minutes or more! I hated the stillness, but this is what it took to catch a fish, I was told, so still I would be.

I gave the fish plenty of opportunities to let me catch them. At the pond, the lake, on the dock, on a boat, I don’t know how many times. Cambryn, my big sister, caught a fish almost every time. Slowly, I felt a burden building inside of me. I had to catch a fish soon.

It wasn’t long before a camping trip presented the perfect opportunity. All my friends would be there: Anna and Natalie. Just the kids and the dads and the great outdoors. “Heck,” I thought, “I’ll even go coon huntin’ while I’m at it.” I had only heard about this from “Where the Red Fern Grows,” but camping meant trying something new, even if I wasn’t sure what a “coon” was.

Natalie and I made a “trap,” which consisted of an egg carton full of dirt, pine needles, and twigs. That night, our fathers left the food on the picnic table and there were enough raccoons for us to think we had succeeded.

Although I was excited about the raccoons, the first day had come and gone without any success at the pond, where I was really focused. Anna, Natalie, John… everyone had caught at least one fish today. Cambryn had caught two. That was hardly fair.

“Tomorrow,” I promised myself as I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

The next morning was a frenzy as everyone ate breakfast, tore down tents, and cleaned up messes. A few of the kids had already run off to fish and I heard, “Dad, look at what I caught!” one too many times, so I quickly fetched my Mickey Mouse pole and trotted off to the pond. On the way down, I heard one of the girls say they were tired of fishing and had already caught a couple this morning. My heart started pounding with fear. “Everyone but me… Everyone…”

Not only had I not caught a fish on this trip, I had never caught a fish since the beginning of time: five years. I could feel the fear and disappointment of being left behind well up in my little body, but I would suppress it for now, or one of the boys would make fun of me. I resolved not to leave until I caught a fish.

With every cast of the line as far into the pond as Mickey would go, I lost a piece of my confidence. Behind me, sounds of loading up cars with bags and coolers struck my heart like needles. The line was always loose! The red and white bobber wasn’t doing the thing it was named for! The thing it did when all the other kids went fishing… 

“Season, it’s time to go!” Cambryn yelled in my direction.

Suddenly, I knew that nothing was going to change. I had seen the other kids struggle to learn things, but I was an exceptional failure… I was put here to watch everyone else so easily get the simple things that I struggled so hard for and still didn’t get. They were first class. I was only fit for second class, and I was alone.

“I’m NOT GOING,” I answered.

Dad came over and, having no idea what he was about to get himself into, told me it was time to go. 

“I CANT GO TILL I CATCH A FISH. EVERYONE ELSE CAUGHT A FISH. I DIDNT CATCH A FISH.” I cried through tears and a broken heart, loud enough for everyone in the camp to hear.

My dad, my sweet, sweet dad… I don’t know how he always knew what to do. He came over and sat down, put me on his knee, and said something I didn’t expect at all.

“Let’s ask God to help you catch a fish.”

He took my shoulders and prayed a simple prayer that I don’t remember exactly, but went something like, “Jesus, please help Season to catch a fish. Amen.”

Still dumbstruck with my dad’s response, we took the pole together and cast the line out one last time. Before the hook touched the water, a fish jumped out of the pond and swallowed it.

______________________________________

I really don’t remember anything after that. I couldn’t believe what had just happened, but I couldn’t not believe it… I had seen it with my own eyes! And dad… he was probably shocked, too.

What I do remember very clearly is having a real relationship with God from that day forward. I was only 5, but I spoke to God and I didn’t just believe, I knew He was listening to me, looking at me, responding to me, no matter what it was I asked.

When I say I’ve been “saved” since I was 5 years old, what I mean is, God showed Himself real to me in such a personal way that it has carried my faith in Him for these 20 years straight. Of all the testimonies of salvation I’ve heard in my life, mine is by far the silliest… but I can honestly tell you that catching that fish proved God to me. It still does. When I remember the story, when I ask my dad, “Did we make that up? That really happened, right?” he says, “Yeah, it really happened.”

This month, God reminded me of my fish story. He’s told me I need to ask Him for something that I want. I didn’t want to ask, because it’s hard for me to ask. It’s hard because I’m still afraid the answer will be, “You don’t measure up like the others do, so I can’t give you what belongs to the first-class.”

He reminded me this week that that response is not from Him, and that fish is His proof. I ask God for things because I don’t measure up, because I never could. But, praise God, I don’t have to, because He gives grace to the humble, and provides for me even a fish, or whatever I ask. And when I get it, I forget completely why I wanted it in the first place, because the asking and receiving was so holy, because in the same moment He gave me what will pass away, He gave me what will never pass away… It’s not about the fish anymore, it’s about Emmanuel, God with us.

Life in an airstream for a year? For five? Please?

Presumption

“If ye have faith and doubt not, if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed and cast into the sea, it shall be done.” Good people….have been tempted to tempt the Lord their God upon the strength of this saying….Happily for such, the assurance to which they would give the name of faith generally fails them in time. Faith is that which, knowing the Lord’s will, goes and does it; or, not knowing it, stands and waits….But to put God to the question in any other way than by saying, “What wilt thou have me to do?” is an attempt to compel God to declare Himself, or to hasten His work….The man is therein dissociating himself from God so far that, instead of acting by the divine will from within, he acts in God’s face, as it were, to see what He will do. Man’s first business is, “What does God want me to do?”, not “What will God do if I do so and so?”

-George MacDonald: An Anthology, 29

Books are weapons in the war of ideas.

And you can buy me this awesome print or a weapon for Christmas.

…particularly Jane Eyre [for Kindle or otherwise].

"We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence. ‘Thou shalt not’ is soon forgotten, but ‘Once upon a time’ lasts forever."

-

— Philip Pullman

Interesting quote about reading/writing. “Thou shalt not” is very Old Testament/Moses, but when Jesus came, he told stories.

Home #2

Home #1

"Once when Season and Cambryn were little, I went in the garage and told them I was going to scream and for them not to be alarmed. I screamed really loud and then they came over and hugged me and said, ‘Mom, it’s going to be okay.’"

- My Mom

My Shirt With Thumb Holes Started It

The hole on my sleeve is the gnawingest thing on my brain right now. I bought this shirt when I was old enough to know better than to buy this shirt. It’s juvenile . But now I have it. Now I need to save money. Now I must continue to wear it. I suppose I could get out of it by making yet another shirt purchase, but I fear I would hate myself far more if I was to continue to wallow in my consumerist ways.

There is a funny thought. Wallowing in consumerism. That is a word I would never have thought (I guess I did accidentally think of it, though) to use with consumerist, yet it is rather fitting.

I don’t really want to be a consumer, do I? I want to be a producer. Or whatever the opposite of consumer is.

Yet, I wallow in consumerism, as if I am its unwilling victim. As if my hands are tied. As if I was born into the world a beast of consumerist burden.

It’s foolish to think this way. Hence, I will not replace the shirt on my back simply because it has juvenile thumb holes.

I am no victim. If you choose to act as if you are one, I should know better than to let your foolishness cause me to also remain foolish. I cannot blame your decision to wallow for my decision to wallow. You may be “off the hook” until God or life opens your eyes, but if my eyes are already open, I am free of excuses.

It’s nice to  be free of excuses.

Oh, and yes, I realize there is no point in producing if no one is consuming what you produce. It’s not all bad. I just meant the wallowing. The race. The never-have-enough, keeping-up-with-the-joneses lie. That’s a disgusting way to live. That type of consumer needs to watch American Beauty and listen intently to Kevin Spacey confront them with,

“This isn’t life, it’s just stuff. And it’s become more important to you than living. Well, honey, that’s just nuts.”

…My shirt with thumb holes started it, but I finished it.