big enough to keep

Aug 28, 2009

I pray that I may live to fish
until my dying day
and when it comes to my last cast,
I then most humbly pray,
when in the Lord’s great landing net
and peacefully asleep,
that in His mercy I be judged
Big Enough to Keep.

Sidenote: I gave this quote to Richard on a pillow when he graduated from college clear back in 1995. It is a lovely quote and I always want to remember it…but the pillow? It is time for it to go to DI. We need to declutter desperately. I have been working on it slowly but surely over the summer and have gotten one big box of stuff to deliver to those wonderful folks over at DI. I actually need to deliver twenty at least one hundred big boxes of junk stuff to them. This pillow is going in the box. It is somewhat sad to say goodbye to it, but so freeing to have it gone from our home. We have moved 14, yes 14, times in our marriage, and I am not moving that pillow again. I am not having it on my shelf collecting dust anymore. Instead, I will just post about it here and have it on record for all posterity to read again and again…LOL!

My husband is a fisherman. He is an avid fisherman who does not get nearly enough time be in his beloved waters. He is not a fisherman who stands on the side of the river and casts again and again. He is a fisherman who hikes to the hidden streams, wades through the rapids, and walks miles up and down the river all in the course of a short fishing trip.

He is also insane. He is going night fishing tonight. Right now. At 11:28. He is leaving to go fishing all night long as his last hurrah for the summer before his life becomes an endless series of looooonnnnnggggg hours at work and not enough sleep at night. His soul is rejuvenated by fishing. Something about the water, the air, the fish, the suspense, and the thrill feeds him and gives him what he needs to go on.

Right now he needs that. So, even though he went fishing last night, I told him to go again tonight and to have a great time. I know what next week brings and it exhausts me just thinking about it. I can’t imagine what it does to him. He will be trying to work about 70 hours a week and stay sane, alert, and attentive to us.

Pray for that man – he needs it.