In a Fish House....For 3 Days

Though summer is not officially here....we are certainly acting like it and loving the weather.  Thanks to the greenhouse throwing out lots of flowers again, I was able to manage snagging a few on their way to the dump and planted our porch with the "throwouts".  Yeah!

I had hoped for a garden this year, but it isn't looking so good.  We are needing to focus on the house and even though it seems like an easy thing to dig up some dirt and put a few seeds in, it is not.  Every moment counts around here.  If, by some miracle, the garden does go in, I will be very happy, but each summer, I just let God decide if it will happen.  Surrender.  Even in my gardening.

This past week my son spent some time in the fish house.  This is one of the shifts he gets where he couldn't understand why he would be put there.  He wanted to be with the whales, not with the stinky fish, mixing up their food, pail after pail.  Talk about stinking like fish when we picked him up!  Get this, he was in the fish house THREE DAYS.    Sound familiar?  The belly of the whale department.  By the 3rd day, he was done and was glad to be back upstairs with the sun and the belugas.  But wait, he was called back in by another employee.  He had missed a few things that he needed to not overlook.   He wasn't in trouble.  He was unaware and they just wanted him to be aware.  But it still made him feel bad.

But this was when it occurred to me.  God was using the fish house, the worst job in the whole place to teach him another lesson.  The irony of it being 3 days, in the belly of the whale department was too crazy to not notice.  How I loved the picture!  He didn't, but I did!  He did, however, immediately realize that God was using the worst job to teach him another skill.  This week he's back in the fish house, but just for a day here or there (everyone has to take a day in the dreaded fish house).  He now goes in with his eyes open, wondering what he's supposed to be learning now, no longer dreading, but anticipating. 

This is what we all have to do.  We have to embrace the fish house we find ourselves in, the stinky place that no one wants to be in, but where God teaches all the lessons.  I love it.

Many years ago, I was in the fish house, in Barranquilla, Colombia, on the coast of South America.  I was teaching in an American private school far away from anything I knew.  It was my first year of teaching and I really stunk at it.  I had gone in with all these amazing ideas and the school just wanted me to follow their curriculum.  What was I thinking?  But teacher's college had taught me to be a free-thinker!  I was on the verge of losing my job.  It took me going home at Christmas that first year, meeting with all my former associate teachers and then heading back with a new plan to save my job, which I did.  I ended up with a glowing reference letter from the principal by the end of it all, but I sure had to go through a hard time in my own personal fish house in order to learn all the lessons God wanted me to learn.

My parents were praying their hearts out for me while I was gone.  This saved my life in more than one way.  I knew Colombia was a dangerous place, but I had no idea how dangerous.  They recently gave me a book to read called The Lord of Bellavista.  This talks about a prison in Medellin, which is a city I visited while I was there and how God transformed the prison from a place where 50 murders occurred a month (within the prison itself) to ZERO murders.  It is an incredible story.

I was there during the time of Pablo Escabar, the drug lord.  He was killed while I was there.  I remember seeing the picture of his bullet ridden body on the front page of the paper.  I knew I was in the middle of a historically interesting time.  The other teachers and I were careful when we went out, but looking back probably not careful enough.  The school where I was at had kidnappings regularly. The wealthy kids there had bodyguards.  Everyone knew someone who had been murdered.  I didn't want to live in fear, so I didn't, but I probably should have been more aware that I was a target, too.  The drug lords kidnapped for ransom money regularly.  I was so obviously a westerner that I could have easily been kidnapped.  This book made me realize how ignorant I was to what was going on all around me.  I'm kind of glad I didn't know the extent of it. 

It also made me realize how God was at work this whole time, too, behind the scenes, without me even knowing it.  I went to an alive church while I was there, all Spanish-speaking.  I got so good at Spanish that I could eventually hear a sermon and get something out of it!  I met with the pastor and people in the church regularly.  It was so great.  Their services were alive.  It made Canadian churches seem dead in comparison.  But again, reading the book, it made me see how much spiritual warfare was at play.  If God was moving in South America, Satan had to do something about it and in some cases, it seemed like he was winning.  Yet the book showed how, no, God was still in control and was using regular people to change that dark country.  It was such an encouragement to read how God could take these hardened criminals and then make them missionaries to other jails!  Wow.

I don't know if I could go back to Colombia now.  I'd be afraid in some ways.  However, it really is the most beautiful country and has so many amazing places I want to show my kids!  I guess for now I have to wait, but maybe one day.  Anyway, I'm grateful for the memories the book stirred up in me.  It reminded me of my hard time back in my early teaching career and also of how God used that time to shape me, to teach me utter dependence on Him, though I hated almost every moment of it.  He used the prayers of my parents to keep me safe, just as I pray for my own kids now.  I'm sure they wished they could have taken away the pain of my hard time, but being overseas made that impossible.  They only had prayer which was enough.  I was also kept safe because of their prayers, I'm sure.  I would like to take my kids out of their own hard times, but I know those hard times are what shape them.  They shaped me. 

I won't willingly walk into a fish house now.  They stink, but if God wants me or my kids to be in one, so be it.