I remember summers at Gull Lake
in northern Minnesota. Far removed from
any city – only Brainard was nearby – there was no pollution, no noise, no
hurry. The air was cooler up there,
perhaps because of the breeze off the lake.
Or the tall pine trees that shaded the grounds of the small cabin resort
where my family stayed for one lazy week out of each year.
Whatever the reason, the time we
spent up there was wonderful. For me,
there are special memories. The whole
family, including grandparents, cousins, and my aunt and uncle gathered for
some quality time, a good share of the usual bickering among the children, and
some of the best fishing I can remember.
I used to love to catch sunnies –
tender, tasty little panfish. For a
ten-year-old girl, it’s a fairly easy catch.
Grandpa taught all of us grandkids how to fish. We’d all head to the dock with our poles and
buckets of worms, ready to catch a great Northern Pike. But first, we had to learn to bait the
hook. Grandpa’s number one rule was that
if we were going to fish, we had to put the worm on the hook ourselves. My little cousin Heidi’s fishing career was
over then and there. Those worms wiggled
and squirmed, but we got them on the hook, and we even caught a few fish.
As much as I enjoyed that, my favorite
memory is of me and Grandpa alone on the boat.
Everyone else was playing on the shore where my mom, aunt and Grandma
were sunbathing. Grandpa and I were way
out in the middle of the lake, ready to catch that evening’s dinner. Shh, quiet.
When a fish nibbled the bait off the hook and got away, I would re-bait
and start again. I enjoyed having Grandpa
all to myself, even it if meant baking in the hot sun, cutting my hands on the
hook, or feeling the ache that comes from sitting in the boat too long. But all the while, Grandpa offered plenty of
praise and encouragement.
The best part came when we
arrived back at the dock. We’d hold up
our net full of fish, proud that we had provided dinner for the entire family. But instead of heading to the kitchen with
our load, we made our way down a path to the fish house. This was basically a screened-in hut with a
single counter built for the sole purpose of scaling and fileting fish. This was the tough part, because it was
rather a gross process. The counter was
permanently stained with blood, and the single trashcan was usually half full
of fish remains. And the smell . . .
well, you can imagine. But then, that’s
where my “suffering” ended.
Grandpa, however, set himself to
the task of cleaning the fish. (I always
thought this was an odd term for something that seemed so dirty.) He pulled out his knife and deftly sliced
open each fish and cut it down to the tasty meat. In only a few moments, he had a pile of shiny
white pieces ready to be battered and fried.
By the time I was seated at the
table, listening to someone say the blessing, I no longer felt my sunburn, or
felt the ache in my hands, or smelled the odor of the fish house. I only knew that dinner was going to be
good. Corn on the cob and tomatoes grown
in Grandpa’s garden, Mom’s homemade fries, and the center of the banquet, the
sunny filets. What a feast!
God invites us to taste of His
goodness. But we can only do that if we
trust. Out in the middle of the lake,
with mosquitoes humming around me, I had to trust that it would be worth the
wait, worth the trouble. I didn’t make a
conscious effort to trust in the outcome; I knew it by instinct, and by past experience. And I knew that Grandpa had something good
planned for me. And I think it is the
same with our heavenly Father. He has so
many blessings waiting for us, if we will only trust Him. Sometimes we must endure the uncomfortable,
or downright painful, things in life; and it takes all we have to trust in the
outcome. But over time, with a lot of
experience, trust may become our automatic response to tough times. And we will eventually know deep in our
hearts what we have been learning all along – that the good things in
life will come to us in time, and will appreciate them so much the more when we
have had to work and wait.
