Hi Friends,
So the kids went to their school's carnival on Sunday and sure enough, Jayna came home with a bag full of those little carnival goldfish that you win by throwing a ping pong ball in the little fish bowl. Oh joy.
But that got me thinking about the first time we brought home carnival fish … and I expected them to die. I learned something then that I needed to remember today. Maybe you do too.
Back then, it happened like this:
They were supposed
to die. I had planned on it, counted on
it, prepared my five-year-old daughter for the inevitable. From the moment Bethany won those two tiny
goldfish at the carnival, I fully expected to be flushing them away a few days
later.
I
lifted the clear plastic bag and stared at the fish. One bumped against the side.
Bethany danced
around me. “Yay, yay, yay, one for me
and one for Joelle!” She tugged on my
pantleg. “Do we have a bowl for them? Do we have food? What are we going to name them? Will they get bigger? Are they girls? I’m going name one Dorothy.” She grinned and clapped her hands.
I lowered the bag.
The water sloshed inside it causing the fish to dip and spin.
I brushed my hand over Bethany’s hair.
“We have everything we need, Sweetie, but you
know fish like this don’t live that long.”
“How come?”
“I don’t know. They just don’t.” I’d gotten fish like this many times before,
some as carnival prizes, some with “three free goldfish” coupons from our local
pet store. They never lived past the first
week.
Bethany
sighed. “Well, all right. But can we keep them anyway?”
“Of course.” I put my arm around her and smiled.
When we got home
that evening, I carefully put the fish into a bowl of treated water and crumbed
some fish food flakes on top.
Bethany pressed
her nose against the outside of the bowl and watched with big eyes.
“Maybe they won’t die right away.”
I patted her
arm. “Bedtime now. Go get ready.” Then, I glanced back at the
fish as Bethany scampered upstairs. I
shook my head. They’ll probably be belly-up by morning.
But they weren’t.
The next morning they
were swimming around their bowl and glowing with health.
“Look, Mom,
they’re still alive!”
Give them a few days. I stifled the words and turned away.
A few days came
and went. The fish still lived. I gave them until the weekend. They were still alive on Monday. I cleaned the bowl, treated new water, and
waited.
Another week, another bowl
cleaning, another and another. And still
the fish lived.
One day I even
dropped one of them into the sink as I was cleaning the bowl. I grabbed it up and threw it back into the
water. It’ll die for sure now. But
it didn’t. In fact, it’s been almost a
year, and those tiny fish aren’t so tiny anymore (Note: those fish lived for YEARS … one even for over 5 years and grew huge!).
Recently, I looked
at them and wondered aloud, “Why have these fish lived when all my previous
goldfish died so quickly?” After all, I
treated their water too, and fed them the same food, and cleaned the bowl just
the same as with these fish.
My husband, Bryan,
answered from the other room, “It’s the water out here. It’s got to be.”
“Water? What do you mean?”
“All those other
fish we had at our old house. Now we’re
on well water. We had it tested. Remember?
It’s pure, a lot purer anyway than that city water we used to get.”
The water - what
they were surrounded in, what they lived in and breathed every day. Of
course.
The next week, I
was reading Philippians when I came to chapter four, verse eight (NIV). It said, “Finally, brothers, whatever is
true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is admirable-- if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--
think about such things.” And as I
thought about the idea of purity and excellence, I remembered Bethany’s
not-so-little fish. They were weak, and small,
and destined to die quickly. But they
lived because of the purity of the water, even after the hardship of dropping
one in the sink.
People, maybe,
aren’t much different. How well we
survive, how well we thrive, may have everything to do with what we let our
thoughts soak in, what we live and breathe every day. Do I let my mind swim around in polluted
water? Or do I clean the bowl and put in pure water as often as I can?
After all, even
the weak survive when the water’s pure.
Also, our friend, Doug Huckins, will be having quadruple bypass open heart surgery this coming 
