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Parable of the jumping fish

I have a fish tank with 4 decent sized fish in it. The other day we decided to clean it completely out and start fresh with new rocks and toys. The first order of business is to take all the fish out. We had a bucket ready. We take our little net and go fishing in the dirty water. The first two we caught pretty easily, the other two not so much. The water level was not that high when we caught them and they were all over the place. One of them jumped out of the cup that we had to use to capture them. We managed to catch them all and then we left them in the bucket so that the tank can adjust. With it being Christmas day, we were a little busy. I checked on them at about 9 am. All present and accounted for and went about my day which was full of baking and cooking. Finally, after we had eaten dinner and it was going to be time to put the fish back in the tank. Somebody noticed that there were only 3 fish in the bucket. We all disagreed instead of checking. A few minutes later somebody else said there are only 3 fish. We thought we better go look. Sure enough on the floor was the same jumping fish that was so hard to catch the night before. My husband touched the fish and it flipped around, so we put him back in the bucket and went to do the transfer. Everything is great with this fish now, his eyes are no longer bulging and he appears to be unscathed from his little adventure. This got me to thinking about a few things. In the beginning, this little fish was zooming all over the place, eluding our best efforts at catching him. That could be like us, we are so fearful of something that would be a good change that we run around in circles not willing to let go or in the jumping fishes world not wanting to be captured or surrendered to it. Why? One word, pride!! We think we know what we want and when a different picture comes along we start fighting. We pit our will against God’s and say not today. Even when you are being kept safe in a holding pattern, you are still fighting. Marvin J. Ashton said ” There is a tendency to think of change as the enemy. Many of us are suspect of change and will often fight and resist it before we have even discovered what the actual effects will be. When change is thought through carefully, it can produce the most rewarding and profound experiences in life.” As for my little fishes, they are loving their new and much cleaner tank. That little fish thought was going to be a bad thing turned out better than he could have ever imagined, but he kind of had to go through a difficult time to get there. So when there is a difficult time in your life that is forcing a change to happen, know this, it’s probably going to work out better than what you thought.