Cracked Roots & Roses 38: Fish

I sat in church, trying to choke back hot tears, as he sat there with another woman in that same dingy sport coat. When I was briefly dating him, I thought he was a great catch because he was a minister and physically attractive. The problem was, I had created a fictional character in my head of who I wanted him to be—not who he was in reality. Truth is, my life would’ve been miserable. The fact was, he was a womanizer, and I didn’t see it until he stopped talking to me cold turkey.

Every other week, he walked into church with a different woman. One night, after serving at the altar, I walked to my car, and there he was, hugging yet a different woman. At the time, I lived across the street from a Starbucks and once saw him standing outside, on my block, leaning into yet another woman’s car. The NERVE. I was hurt and furious. I needed to go back to God to get free.

That was enough. I was in torment. That following week, on Wednesday night, I rededicated my life to Christ. I needed to be free and to forget he existed, so I surrendered all. There was no way I was dropping another tear over a man who pulled one side of his hat over his eye. He was a BUM, and I didn’t even see the real him until I came up out of the baptismal water.

It’s amazing what happens when you get truly free of a person. I was able to see him without the rose-colored glasses, and it was pathetic. After I got baptized again, I decided to volunteer to serve at church. During one of the meetings, I met a girl named Tam. After class, she asked me to give her a ride home, so I did.

The ride was uncomfortable. She kept staring at me, then abruptly grabbed my arm and told me about a vision she had. The arm grab while driving stood out to me, and that put her in the acquaintance category. She became kinda clingy after that because she wanted an instant friendship, and that’s not how friendships work. It was suspicious that someone I just met wanted a front-row seat to my life and thought I would entrust them with all my business. 

I gave her rides home from time to time but never felt comfortable enough to hang out with her much. I was also put off that she didn’t have a job and used prophetic manipulation to get things. She was living in a women’s apartment because she gave the owner a “word from God.” She was soon evicted because she couldn’t pay any rent.

A few months later, I had a life-altering dream about fish. I was in a small studio apartment hosting a party. People were sitting two to a chair, and I had on an apron, serving them. There was a medium fish tank on the fireplace full of small tropical fish. I turned away to answer a question, then looked back at the tank. Now, instead of the small tropical fish, there was one big catfish.

The fish was growing right before my eyes, so much so that he didn’t fit in the tank anymore. He flipped out of the tank and landed on the oval braided rug in front of the fireplace. I scooped him up with a spatula and laid a can of bug spray on the lid to hold it down. Just then, I woke up.

I wrote the dream down because it was peculiar and vivid. I instantly knew what it meant but pushed it away because I needed the meaning to be something else.

Later that week, I met Tam for lunch. After lunch, I took her home and felt led to tell her the dream, so I did. She heard it all and said, “You already know what it means.” I said, “No, I don’t know if I trust that.”

She said, “The analogy is that you’re a big fish in a small pond. It’s time for you to go out on your own.”

I said, “No, I can’t do that. I just paid off all the debt from my divorce, and I have no money.” I wasn’t really talking to her—I was telling God I couldn’t do it.

She said, “If you don’t leave the job, you’ll lose it and have to leave it anyway.”

She got out of the car, and I drove home in tears. I knew that’s what it meant, and I knew I had to quit the spa. I had gotten too comfortable, and I know comfort is the enemy of growth. I had long outgrown the place.

I was mad at God. I had just gotten my bearings, but now I would be disrupted again in less than five years’ time. Then I realized why that man had come into my life—it was to distract me. He was not my husband. He was the same distraction used every time I was about to be promoted.

The last time I saw him in person, I was coming from the back room at church, and he was standing near the band area. I walked right past him without saying hello.

Right then, he grabbed my arm. I turned around, and he got close to my face and said, “Don’t you ever walk past me without speaking to me.”

I snatched my arm away, rolled my eyes, tossed my hair, and kept walking. It felt good to reject him like he did me.

Now that was done. I had the dream to deal with. I needed to forget it.