Swimming and seafood are my two favorite things. If I had to give either one up, I would just die. I loved swimming so much I was a lifetime member of a synchronized swimming class that met in the ocean. The minute class broke up every day I was off fishing for …fish of course. Some of my classmates that have graduated live in the lap of luxury, being catered to daily. They are so full of themselves we never see them again, unless we buy a ticket to see them perform and not one of us was willing to leave the comfort zone of the ocean to go inland. We knew how to handle the danagers of water sharks, wiley land sharks were another matter all together. We, the non-graduate-life-time members became low life and inaccessible to those that sold themselves out. Being “owned” was not the life I would choose for myself. I love doing my own thing, my time is my time not some big corporation’s that tells me who I can see, when to swim, and delivers food to me. Hell, I’m fat enough with out living the soft life! I’m just in swimming school for the socialization and exercise. Don’t fall for the lie that seafood is slimming. Eat enough of anything and you need a good exercise regimen to burn calories. This is a verifiable fact as most of my classmates weigh in at the same unenviable weight as me. We work out to eat out!!
Mom heavily influenced my lifestyle. She delivered me through water birth. She didn’t have to research it as some prospective parents do, she knew instinctively it was the best way to go, easing her newborn from womb to water and then to air. (Actually, she didn’t have time for research; she was swimming herself when I decided to make my entrance, or exit! She barely had time to get me to the surface! ) Studies seem to confirm that a baby born in warm water won’t drown, it’ll get it’s air from the placenta and won’t even take a breath till it reaches the surface: it’s much kinder than dropping a baby into a cold room from a hot uterus which seems “sooooo” cruel. Honestly, people have no idea what they are doing to their young sometimes. Moreover, the whole time she was carrying me, what did she consume? What else, seafood. So my fate was sealed from conception, swimming and seafood like I mentioned at the beginning, are engraved into my constitution. You might say they’re genetically encoded on my DNA!
In my free time as I float on the waves, catching some rays and waiting for something delectable to be trapped in my net I often ponder life’s big question. Why am I here, what is God’s purpose for me? What’s the big deal? ….are questions that preoccupy me constantly. I’m not pretty. People love to stare and gawk at me. They ask themselves, (don’t think I don’t know this), how someone my size can dare to float on the water in open view, in public no less, with friends that have the same body composition! If they had my fat body, they’d keep it submerged! (They don’t realize my body fat keeps me from submerging! Idiots!) Do they think the obesity challenged have atherosclerotic hearing? Do they think ugly and dumb are synonymous? Maybe they assume I have swimmers ear and am completely deaf. Who knows? I just know I really want to understand what God had in mind for me and me only. I know it’s illogical to question the creator of the universe; but really? What was the big idea producing me, was I meant to be a joke? I have comrades in the same situation as me that don‘t seem to be embarrassed by their outer shells, totally content with their inner package. Totally! They don’t envy the pencil thin beauties that gape at us from the many boats that pass our rehearsals on their way to deep-sea fishing and ocean touring. I notice the men that stare at me then pinch the behinds of their feminine companions, making some threatening remarks about not letting themselves go. I’m big, subcutaneously challenged, and most men are afraid of me. I console myself with the fact I’m too much of a woman for them, but this knowledge doesn’t help my self-esteem when I see the women they prefer to me.
School let out early one day due to the forecast. Unexpected heavy weather was on its way and everyone was anxious to go to his or her personal haunts. The sight seeing boats that circled around our free performances were packing up and placing closed signs at the ticket offices. Every one with a brain was heading for safety. The ocean is not weather friendly. The coast was deserted, except for me. I never pass up an opportunity to get out on the deep, deep seas. Call me a fool, call me reckless, just call me! I love the perilous life of floating on the surface of choppy waters, the white waves splashing over me strong enough to capsize larger vessels; it’s the adventurous red neck in me. After long hours of training and public demonstrations to passing vessels I need to let myself go wild and throw caution to the wind, literally.
I did decided it was time to go home when I observed a huge fishing boat ahead of me being cast about like flotsam. I occasionally do give in to reason! Five sailors were peering over the side as though they lost something overboard while dozens were rushing about securing lines and hoisting sails, and whatever else it is sailors do. I wasn’t having any luck with trawling today, anyway. The fish had all descended to calmer waters so I opted to pick up some Asian food that I swallowed whole on the way to shelter as the storm whipped about me.
Suddenly I was racked with discomfort. Discomfort being a mild term for gut wrenching pain! Apparently, I’ve spent so much time limiting myself to seafood, (why is it called seafood when I get it from the ocean?) that the introduction of something foreign caused me great abdominal discomfort. I missed the next couple of days of school. Thank heavens I am not graded for attendance.
I languished about the beach to the calls of my peers encouraging me to join them. Everything below my esophagus was in spasms, for once I didn’t want to dive or snorkel or … (gasp)… eat! I was miserable. If I’d been exposed to the crime I’d swear I was pregnant with all the kicking and pushing that was taking place in my stomach! Talk about getting to know God, being sick has opened up time in my frenzied schedule for more prayer hours. I made every kind of imaginable promise if only I could get well. I’d go on a diet, I’d not bully smaller beings, I’d give the fish I trapped another chance for survival, I’d become a vegetarian. I wouldn’t question my physical configuration again, I‘d learn to be happy in whatever state I discovered myself in! Lastly, I’d stop questioning God’s authority and judgment. I don’t think I ever chatted with God as much as I did in these last few days when I thought death would be a definite health improvement.
Finally, God seemed to take into account my frail frame and the fact that I was completely at his mercy. As I rolled on the beach encircled by some of my closest friends, trying to oust what ever had troubled my tummy, I experienced a great heaving inner explosion and expelled something foul smelling onto the sand. This “something”, encrusted in fish bones, seaweed and other green vegetation, sprang to its feet and put distance between us on two wobbly appendages. Numerous feet away from the shoreline it collapsed after stumbling a few times, kissed the earth and stared at me in horror after removing a stringy veil from it‘s freshly sanded visage. I get that look enough already, friend, cut it out! So this land lover was the reason for my gastric upset. One lesson I just learned was to chew before swallowing so my food wouldn’t have a chance to disagree with me.
Two surfers approached my discarded dinner and I heard my reluctant Asian take-out-meal ask for directions to someplace called Nineveh as my buddies helped push me back out to sea on the tide. Friends are priceless, I thought to myself, I couldn’t wait to tell them how I’d questioned God and learned the meaning of my existence. God can even use an overweight ugly whale to fulfill his purpose for someone’s life. Nineveh, I’ve heard boaters talk about that evil place, making me glad I’m water bound. Jonah and I had been temporary prayer partners, praying for the same thing, though I had no interest in some land locked town I’d never see I certainly was in full approval of his release from my belly.
Gen 1:20-21
Jonah 1:17
Jonah 2:10
Math 18:20
Rom 9:19-21
1 Cor 6:1
Eph 2:10
