Still learning to sail my ship

I wish I had more courage.

To paraphrase my favorite author Melody Beattie;

“I may not be a great warrior. I might not lead explorations to the North Pole or climb Mount Everest, but I still need courage.”

I need courage daily it seems and most certainly almost every time I come home after a long day at work or after a time on a weekend getaway. 

I’m still learning to make peace with living alone and how to accept the reality of where I am in my life, and to accept it for what it is. 

I’m also still learning how to juggle the many unbalanced moments in my neck of the woods that revolve around the upkeep and maintenance required here as a single homeowner.  

I’m also still learning how to design just the right mix between work and play.

All of these things require courage and I need courage every day.

This avenue of thought has been ruminating in my mind of late because I was clued in recently to the fact that the social expectations of recovery from tragedy and trauma and loss continue to plague the ones who live in the mire of these past sorrows.

And I’m here to admit that even after two and a half years since my life changed in an instant, I remain a student of adaptation. And I still need courage every day to go forward in a way that honors the love I have for the journey and for myself.

I continue to have a really good support base in my little corner of the planet. I have family and friends who make a day better and those who make life better and at least one who provides both for me in an incomparable way.

Yet I still need courage every day to believe that change is good and change is positive and change is possible. It’s always a possibility, right Dad?

I have read and written and talked and been counseled and cried and shouted and swore an oath to move forward in any way I can and still—it takes courage do that every day.

And sometimes I don’t have any courage to bring to the plate. I still am learning that that empty plate is okay too. I am still learning that it’s okay to be carried when my courage is nowhere to be found. Good friends figure that stuff out and have strong arms.

“Honest friends are doorways to our souls, and loving friends are the grasses that soften the world.”

And the special friend who after quality time together asks me if my “tank” is full and means it, that too, takes courage.

Brene Brown said, “Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.”

Here I am. 

That northern lake takes the cake

He’d been hinting at it for about a week, edging ever closer to what I’d hoped would be the ultimate question and result in the day I’ve been waiting for since the smooth-talking outdoorsman first put a minnow on my fishing hook.

“I was thinking about going trout fishing this weekend. Would you like to go along?” he said from the other end of the phone line.

There would be no trying to contain my inner childlike glee this time, no hiding my absolute enthusiasm at the prospect of landing a fighting machine, cousin to a salmon.

I did a fist pump in the air, kicked my leg forward and up and smiled wide as the Grand Canyon.

“You bet I do!” I replied.

Immediately I pictured myself landing a record weight trout that would take me an hour to reel in. I would use every muscle I had. Maybe it would pull me overboard and I’d have to wrestle it into the boat. The trout would be so big I wouldn’t be able to pick it up for that photograph in the latest fishing magazine.

My resolve was crystal clear. The lean, mean fighting machine swimming in those deep cold waters out there in a northern lake had no idea who was coming for him.

“But there’s only one catch,” added the man with the tackle box. I’d heard that cautionary statement before but this time I knew he wasn’t going to say we’d have to snowshoe two miles in to get to the almighty lake.

Instead it was a call to the crowing rooster in me and an early start to the fishing trip.

No problem. I was born early—5:20 a.m. to be exact.

It was like Christmas morning on that “troutful” day. I flew out of bed and into fishing gear, packed a lunch, slammed a coffee, stuffed my pack with chocolate and mosquito repellant and waited on the street corner at the pick-up point with my straw hat.

I was so “bare bones basic” that my smooth-talking outdoorsman nearly drove right by me, mistaking me for a pedestrian.

In the boat on that northern lake, I waited eagerly for my fishing rod to be loaded with a flashy, smart-looking roguish lure like the one the outdoorsman had tied to his own line. All I could think about was that rod-snatching bulldog cheetah of freshwater that had my name tattooed on his gills.

Hopes were dashed when I saw the lure my fishing partner pulled out of the tackle box for my fishing rod, coupled with a lead weight much bigger than I thought I needed.

I didn’t know a thing about trout fishing but I was sure he’d made mine an ill-fated mission.

“I’d like to change to something else. I think the weight is too heavy and I’d like a bigger lure,” I proposed, after a long, long while of trolling in vain.

“Really?” he queried, in a curiously responsive way. “When you catch your first trout, then you can change it,” he said, smiling.

Empty-handed. Yes, that would be me.

There are times when I know what I’m talking about and times when I do not. This was one of those times.

It was all I could do to reel in—catch and release—of four big, beautiful, strong, fighting machines including a 30” fat lunker.

And when I gave the brute back to the deep the outdoorsman asked, “Do you want to change up that lure now?”

I just smiled my “you were right” smile and said, “Not in a million years,” as I watched that gorgeous fish jettison away.

I am the luckiest girl I know.