I’m home again and for the first time sense I arrived back at the old address I have a moment to reflect. For weeks I counted down the days to my coveted vacation. A month in Tennessee to reconnect with my family and my southern roots, to kick off my shoes and be a hillbilly all over again, to sit on mommas deck and watch the fireflies and listen to the crickets, frogs and cicadas; a month to inhale the humid air and fill my lungs with the scents and smells of the earth. Many times I sat on the swing and lost myself in deep thought. I would ask myself over and over again, where do I belong? Why don’t I live here anymore? Where do I fit in this rotating ball? The answers never came…so I simply enjoyed my visit, laughed out loud, took pictures of everything that caught my eye, danced in the parking lot, (by the way no one will ever see that video) socialized in mamma’s kitchen, got my family addicted to LOST, visited the old historical parts of the town, traipsed all over the old haunted Beesley property, went to an acoustical concert in the tiny town of Wartrace, and visited my aunt Dot who is 90 years old and is addicted to facebook! And yes I continued submitting my book to agents and every now and then I actually got a chance to write on my new project. The month went by too fast and before I realized it was time to return home.
I was faced with one of those moments…you know the kind when you are desperately wanting change and you think something miraculous will happen while you are out of your routine and once you return home things will be different. In a sense I did not want to “go fishing” I use that phrase because it is a story in the Bible I relate to probably more than any of the other God encounters I read. It’s found in the book of John chapter 21. After three years of traveling with Yeshua and seeing so many amazing and miraculous life changing events….it seems to be over. So Peter shrugs his shoulders and says well, I guess I am going back….
Simon Peter announced, "I'm going fishing."
The rest of them replied, "We're going with you." They went out and got in the boat. They caught nothing that night. When the sun came up, Jesus was standing on the beach, but they didn't recognize him.
There they are again back at the start. Doing the same ole same ole like they were when Yeshua met them and called them away on an adventure of a lifetime, after He gave them the secrets of life…they go back. But when they went back, nothing in that life had changed. They were still yielding the same pitiful results and what’s worse when the sun came up Yeshua was on the shore in plain sight and they didn’t recognize him.
So here I sit…on my dumb ole boat, yielding the same pitiful results as before. I look around…is he so close and am I looking straight at him and do not recognize him?
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About Me
- Denise Parton Plunk
- I live in Southern California. I am the mother of four beautiful daughters. The most amazing thing I did with my life was to trust it to the nature of God. To put my life into the hands of a God who totally loves me and delights in helping me. My inspiration for writing comes from many places. This quote always arouses the story teller in me. It's like in the great stories Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end it's only a passing thing this shadow even darkness must pass. A new day will come and when the sun shines it'll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you even if you were too small to understand why. But I think Mr. Frodo, I do understand I know now folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something. What are we holding onto Sam? That there's some good in the world Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for.