When we See What we See

Weekends can be tough for the single parent.  It feels like everyone else is having family time.  Some days, I want to have something family-fun to do so badly, it gets overwhelming.  And, I really must take care not to add any unnecessary whelm to my already overwhelmed brain.

A few weekends ago I thought of the herring run.  Every spring, adult herring swim from the ocean upstream to make babies in fresh water by the droves.  They often jump out of the water in their enthusiasm for the trip.  It's an event that draws a nature-loving crowd. 

We had been sick.  The swine flu took us down one by one, recovery was sloow.  I was out of work for two weeks, which, indirectly cost me my job.  I did not see that coming.

So there I was on a Saturday morning, having hardly left the house at all for the past month, and really wanting to leave the house.  Someone on facebook mentioned that seagulls were hovering around the watershed in middleboro, hoping to catch some herring, so that was it, we jumped in the Grand Caravan hot on the trail.  By the way, I love that name for a car.  Grand Caravan.  How regal, how caravanny.  How Grand!

Well, we stopped at one place first.  None.  I drove on into Plymouth, I knew the place that never failed to reveal herring.  Fail!  I pushed the sit and stand stroller with my gigantic child and baby the length of the river ( I have a feeling "river" isn't the correct technical term).  Then we returned to the herring hot spot.  We maybe saw a handful of blurred fish parts.  Not enough to impress.  Shane was annoyed. 

I love being in Plymouth, and I was so happy to keep pushing my heavy children up the street to an awesome little coffee shop called Kiskadee for some hot chocolate and pastry, as consolation prize.

The Grist Mill, aka herring run hotspot, was on the way back to the car so we decided to stop one last time.  I was enjoying the pace of the day, and that everyone was still happy just wandering, doing nothing, really.  Nobody was whining or wanting to leave.  This felt so significant to me.  And then, we saw them.  Hundreds. We could suddenly make out that every ripple in the water was actually a fish.  There were so many fish, we had previously seen their outlines as little waves.  Now, I could not find a space in the water without a fish in it.  I was overcome.  There's a lesson here for me.

We see what we see when we're meant to see it.  Could it be that, without a job or its income, there is an overabundance all around, which will make itself available to me in God's time?  Could it be, that through all of the difficult change our family has undergone, I may have failed to notice all the blessings connecting themselves to us?

I recently read to Shane the story of the fishermen whom had been fishing all night and had caught nothing.  Exhausted, they humored a man they had just met named Jesus, who told them to put the nets back in the water.  And they caught so many fish the nets were ripping apart!  I'm on that train.  This is my story.  Wait and see, my friends.