Filleting the Salmon

Sometimes I just need space. Air, room, nature. Some place to be that does not belong to another person. My biggest struggle since I have moved is desperately missing having 'home'. I miss having a kitchen and living room that I can just chill in. I miss that amazing feeling you get when you walk through the door of your 'own' house and just know that its yours and your heart is safe there. Please don't get me wrong, I have wonderful room mates and the house I live in with them is very comfortable. But its not home yet. These things take time. In the mean time, when I need 'home' I often go to the park or my favorite spot under the bridge. Tonight was such a night. All the world was crowding in around my brain and I needed space. So, I went to the park to swing. Let me tell you a bit about it. 

The Sparta park is not very big but it is quite pretty! The road that ambles through it is paved. Several ball diamonds sprawl out across most of it and the play grounds lie against the banks of the lake. On the other side of the lake a golf course stretches and rolls and weeping willow trees make lace over the lush grass. I love that park. I love to sit by the boat ramp and listen to the life that happens around me! One of my very favorite things to do is sit there and simply write out all that I hear and see! Sometime I will let you all in on one of those ramblings. Tonight I needed the rocking of the swing and the twinkling of the stars to sooth my soul so after swinging awhile I went and lay on my back on the play set and thought. A million thoughts ran through my bothered brain but the one that finally surfaced was "I just want to keep filleting the salmon". The thoughts before that one went something like "Why did I move here? What if people really don't actually want me here? What if I'm just going to totally annoy these people? What if I am only here because I want to be and not actually because God wants me here? What is my future here? What if my whole life here just falls apart and I have nothing to fall back on?" These are things that rattle at the back of my brain a lot, as my poor boyfriend can testify to! See, even though I know that most people who know me would never believe this statement, I am not a person who loves easily. Most of the time it takes me months to really love. But here I'v encountered something entirely different than I have ever known before. I have nowhere to hide. I am constantly forever and always with people who I have to learn to love. This fact makes loving them happen much more quickly and it also makes it much more frightening because they are my whole world right now. I fear overwhelming them or being too real or open for them. I fear doing something very unladylike and being forever branded a tomboy. I fear over reacting to something and being titled 'dramatic' and therefor discounted. Probably none of them is founded but it sure feels like they are! So many times, like tonight, I get so overwhelmed and wrapped up in the big picture and what MIGHT happen and what COULD happen and the worst thing that possibly MAY happen, and I forget to live in the day. Strider on the other hand, bless his dear patient heart, is incredibly good at enjoying every moment. He is teaching me. Slowly. That is where the "filleting the salmon" comes in. One of Striders favorite chefs was asked, after opening some new restaurants or something else very great "Whats your next big thing going to be?" to which he answered something to the effect of "Why cant I just enjoy filleting the salmon?" Its a phrase that runs through my mind a lot when I want to panic about school this fall or my parents at home, or how far Wisconsin is from South Carolina, Mississippi, and Virginia. It reminds me to focus, draws my attention back to what I'm doing, and plants my feet back in the world where loving people is a day to day thing. It reminds me that this church is a whole church. Even though somedays I know that I am "different" than what is the accepted norm here and even though sometimes I feel like everything I do and say sends shock waves, and even though sometimes I wonder what on EARTH God was thinking when He moved me here, or I was thinking when I agreed to it, I know that in reality, I'm just a girl who works in the local deli. I cut meat and cheese, package salads, wrap raw meat, arrange the produce, make an occasional sign, and date the bosses son. In the scheme of things, I'm not all that important. Its a very comforting truth! I don't know about ya'l, but I know I sure tend to think I'm way more important than I am. The flat truth is that I'm just me. Just plain ole me who loves the rain and hates the snow and is afraid of too many things. It is my constant battle to lay my future down at the feet of Jesus and choose to just 'filet the salmon' every day even though I have no idea what six months from now or one year from now or ten years from now may hold for me. "Filleting the salmon" is changing my life and my mind set. You should try it some time :-)