Fishing For Hope

My hubs with a bluecat we caught jug fishing.

It is always the stuff I never thought that I would do that teaches me the most. In fact, if I were to be real honest, I would have to admit that it is the stuff I swore I would never do that teaches me the most, and it seems that my life is one episode of doing the things I swore I would never do after another. I blame my husband and God’s quirky sense of humor.

One of those things I swore I would never do was fishing. I simply did not see the appeal in sitting next to the water all day holding a stick, but that changed soon after my hubs talked me into buying boat. Out of sheer boredom, I picked up one of those sticks and caught my first fish. I was hooked.

Since that day, Ty has been teaching me new and creative ways of fishing, and it has become one of our favorite ways to spend time together. This summer the new way has been jug fishing.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this method of fishing, allow me to explain – it is like an Easter egg hunt for adults. How can that not be fun?

Basically, you take any floating object, usually empty jugs but Ty and I use sections of pool noodles, attach a line, a few hooks, some bait, and drop them in the middle of the lake. Then you go do something else for a few hours, like go to bed overnight. When you return that’s when the fun begins.

Yesterday, we woke bright and early and gathered our gear ready to go out find our noodles. (Okay, Ty woke bright and early and coerced me from bed with promises of monster fish that we had surely caught overnight.) The thing is when you leave floating objects in the middle of large bodies of water, they do not tend to stay put, and when we returned to where we had left them the night before we not a single one was in sight. They had followed the dictates of the wind and waves to some unknown new location, and it was now our task to find them.

We quickly found eight of the twelve we had set out the night before, and to the beginner this sounds like a good thing, but I have learned that it typically isn’t. Oh sure, we found them, but we found them where the environment pushed them. What we really wanted were the ones that were in the strange places, the places that wind wouldn’t take them, and places far from where we had left them. Why? Because only big fish have the stamina to pull those noodles against the forces of nature to where they wanted to go.

No longer was our search limited to the following the wind, we had to start searching the expanse of the bay where we had left them. We began zigzagging across the waters. We found two with tangled lines and knots on the other side of the waters, indicating that a fish had been on the hook and managed to free itself. One was bobbing wildly as it ran from the sound of the boat motor and as I got the fish to the surface, he broke free but not before I saw that was largest one we had hooked to date.

Having searched the far perimeter of the waters, we turned back towards the starting pointing hoping that we had not lost the fourth and final noodle, but it didn’t look promising.

Ty conceded that we had probably lost one, even as we continued to retrace our course, when he suddenly shouted, “I think I see it.” I looked but saw nothing. We were heading deep into a cove far away from where from where we had found any of the other noodles and in the opposite direction from where the wind should have taken it. I was not going to bother getting too excited, in the glare, I figured he was probably just seeing things.

“It just went under the water.” He yelled over the wide open boat motor as he raced to the spot he had seen it. Now, he had my full attention.

I watched the spot he indicated waiting for sign when it popped above the waves and danced on the waves. It was a beautiful sight! Even before I could feel the tug on the line, I knew that this was going to be a great fish. I was not disappointed.

The thing about fishing is there is lot of time to think, and while we were scanning the waters looking for that last noodle, I was doing a lot of it. It seems to me that jug fishing is a pretty good example of what a life faith can look like. Most of us are just pushed around by the environment, no purpose or direction for where we end up, just reacting to the forces of nature we call life. We are easy to find, all clumped up together, empty hooks, nothing to add, and no joy for those who discover us.

Then there are the ones who aren’t where you would expect to find us. The ones who are in strange places, far from where we started, and you might even lose sight of us – think we are lost as we sink beneath the waves for a while. We are the unpredictable, the ones who refuse to simply follow the crowd, and the troublemakers. We can cause you some moments of panic, you might even lament us as lost, and want to give up on ever finding us again because the search has taken too long.

And then I had another thought, in almost every culture fish represent one thing – hope. You see we didn’t wander away from the expected norms because we wanted to upset anyone. We left because something got ahold of us, and it became stronger than the forces of this life. It began to pull us, instead of pushing us, and it began to lead us into places where few dare to go, and it was nothing less than that irresistible force of hope. Hope with enough stamina to fight the wind and waves of life and compel us to take risks, to be okay with sinking beneath the waves for a season, and causes us to dance upon them when we reemerge.

I will not lie. There was a moment of sadness when I thought of all those who have been pushed about by the wind, for how many times are those in search of hope going approach the crowds of believers looking for hope only to find bare hooks? But there is joy too, because I know there are many of you who are out there fighting the winds and waves to be in that place where hope has led you, those of you who are willing to appear lost to the crowds so all so that others can find the hope that you have known.

So to all of you troublemakers, misfits, and rebels of faith, I want you know I see you dancing on the waves and you are a beautiful sight!