I love reading. As long as its not required, assigned or non-fiction. I love stories. I love the power that words on a page have to fuel the imagination. This love of reading was formed in High School under my teacher Mrs. Coon.
There are a few things I remember about her and that class. She was a petite package with a BOOMING voice and a great teacher. I never understood, and still to this day dont understand, Shakespeare and how someone who didn’t write it could become an expert on what the writer was “really” saying.
It was Mrs. Coon teaching me literature and my Jr. High teacher Mrs. Hall teaching me writing that inspired my decision at the beginning of college to be an English teacher. But more than those two women was the encouragement they gave and the one Author I was exposed to, who started it all for me.
Ernest Hemingway
Homework was and always has been something I despise as its very core is derived from someone telling me what to do. I suffer from what is called “dontellmewhattodo” syndrome. This caused me to be a somewhat passive aggressive and insecure “C” student through High School and College.
I have only excelled at the things I am truly passionate about as everything else I find boring and un-challenging therefore needless to do.
Im not saying this is a healthy mindset but it was my mindset for most of school. In life I like to blaze trails and do things that excite me and engage my passions. Rather than maintain and sustain life at a mediocre level.
Lets get back to Hemingway.
The one and only book I have read by Hemingway was “The old man and the sea” assigned to me by Mrs. Coon. For some reason I decided to get a rare jump start on the book and found myself enthralled by the end of the first chapter.
So much so I couldn’t put it down.
The struggle and desperation this old man had to capture the fish to meet needs of himself and his family, the loss, the pain and the heartache were all things I genuinely felt as I read this book in one evening.
It wasn’t until later on in life that I recognized that I for once in my life identified with someone. Always being a big guy both tall and overweight made me awkward and always feeling insecure as I tried, like most adolescents, to make friends and be accepted.
I understood the fight, the desperation, loneliness and pain of the fisherman.
As of late I have recognized even more so as an adult how I still find myself feeling like the old man and the sea.
Chasing down a dream that has left me battered, broken, tired and stuck. If the old man new the fight he was in for with the fish, would he have still done it?
He had passed the point of cutting the line as the work and sacrifice already invested would go to waste.
There he is tired, battered, broken but victorious.
Only to have to fight off predators trying to devour his dream. And ultimately loose his fish to the predators.
What I found oddly funny was that when he dreamed he did not dream of fishing but of an entirely different life watching lions play on the beach.
I feel adrift barely holding on to this dream of planting a church. We’ve invested 2 years into it only to have the priority of the last two years be our son Judah. Thats not a bad thing but at this rate it feels like the sharks just nibbling at the dream.
So many times I feel like Psalms 121:1 “I lift up my eyes to the mountains where does my help come from”. I literally feel like Im asking heaven waiting to declare V2 “ My help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth”.
It often feels as if this is just one big game of loss and gain. At one point I could feel the dream of planting a church within the grasp of reality. Only to have it devoured by predators. Leaving me with the remains of the dream and desperate to make it to land.
I feel so much like I would love to have direction and concrete resolution to where we are going and what we are doing. And yet when you are lost, floating and at the will of the sea a compass is pointless. Im desperately searching for land which makes for a deadly game when your praying for the will of the Lord.
Two wills enter, one will, will leave. Will it be mine or the Lords.
I keep hoping to see a coastguard chopper appear and save us all. But instead we keep rolling with the waves. And instead of it just being me Ive drug my family into this with me.
I believe a lot of people fish for relaxation, however thanks to the Discovery channel we all know that commercial fishing is rough and not a leisure work environment.
I wonder if the fisherman could go back to when he declared he was going to be a fisherman if he would declare something else.
I wonder at which point fatigue turns to bitterness and bitterness to resentment.
What amazes me was that the old man after going through all of that, slept, got his strength back and then was making plans to go fishing once again. His identity never wavered for a moment even after what was supposed to be a huge pay off turned into nothing more than a great fish tale.
How do you find the faith to trust God when you feel like your prayers fall on deaf ears. How do you keep going when you keep getting words that things are about to change and they never do. How do you not give up and get bitter when your struggle just seems to be getting harder with no hope of getting better anytime soon.
One faithful foot in front of the other. My natural comprehensive is not definitive. What is definitive is the faithfulness God has shown throughout history both in the world and in my personal life.
I cannot make eternal decisions based on natural struggles.
How did an old man wrestle a monster fish, fight off sharks and go for days on the open sea all the while dreaming about being somewhere else.
By recognizing who he was.
The greatest fight of his life couldn’t erase the history of who he was for all those years, a fisherman.
We cant allow the temporary to erase our history or identity.
If its not apparent, Im struggling. Im gasping for direction, purpose, identity and peace. To some that would make me unstable, in reality it just makes me human.
Its what I do when Im struggling that will define my character and determine the strength of my integrity.
Your fight is never about what you think it is, its always about something much deeper. God is asking me now more than every who are you? Are you who I created to be or the sum total of your feelings as you go through the storm.
I can be the old man that fishes or the old man watching lions on the beach never having to go through the battle with the fish.
Would you choose to skip your battles and live your life like everyone else with a soft and mold-able character that adapts and molds to what ever you need it to.
Or would you choose to be the one who stands through the trials and fires and has a tempered character that will stand the test of time.