TumbleDweeeb

The One That Didn’t Get Away
A Fish Story (index #0420-04222026)

   Every fisherman has a story about the one that got away.
     This is not that story.

   In Genesis 24, there is a love story that begins the way the best ones do… not with planning, not with strategy, but with a well, and an evening, and two people arriving at the same place at the same moment in time.
     Abraham’s servant had traveled far to find a wife for Isaac. He stopped at a well outside the city and prayed a specific prayer… “Lord, let the right one come.” Before he had finished praying, Rebekah came to the water.
   She was kind. She was generous. She was beautiful. And she was there.
     Meanwhile, Isaac was in the field at evening… the Scripture says he had gone out to meditate. He wasn’t searching. He was simply present, moving through the quiet of an ordinary day with open hands and no expectation. And he lifted his eyes and saw her coming. And Rebekah lifted her eyes and saw him. And she asked … “who is that man walking in the field to meet us?”
   That’s the moment. Two people. Open eyes. The plain light of an ordinary afternoon holding something neither of them had arranged.
     They had never met each other. They had never spoken to each other. But something in that first look across the open ground… something in the lifting of eyes toward each other… was already a yes before a single word passed between them.
   The Scripture says Isaac loved her. Just like that. At the water. In the evening. On a day that looked like every other day until it didn’t.
     The funny thing is that I also know something about that.
   But first… the night before.

   The night before Quarter Creek I was at a low.
     I had been carrying a lot… the kind of weight that doesn’t have a clean name, the kind that accumulates quietly until it isn’t quiet anymore. I had leaned on a friend to help me carry some of it. And that friend, whether she meant it this way or not, let me know that my feelings were too much. That I needed to stop. That I needed to shrink what I was feeling down to a size that was more manageable for the people around me.
   That landed hard.
     Because when someone tells you that your emotions are too much, you don’t just feel rejected. You feel alone in a way that has no bottom to it. I had nowhere left to put what I was carrying. No outlet. No one to hand it to.
   Except God.
     So that night, in the dark, I gave it to Him. Not polished. Not composed. Just honest… the way you can only be with Someone who has never once asked you to be less than you are. I told Him where I was. I told Him how tired I was of waiting for the person I had felt was out there somewhere… felt in the way you feel something you can’t prove, a presence just beyond where you can see. I told Him I wasn’t sure she existed. I told Him I was afraid I was about to walk into the darkest stretch of my life with no one beside me and no one to listen.
   And then I prayed the most specific prayer I think I have ever prayed.

“If this woman exists… if she is real… I need her now. I am tired of waiting. I cannot do this alone anymore.”

   That was the night before.
     The next morning I loaded Kayleigh into the truck, put the tackle box in the back, and drove to Sloss Lake and fished for an hour, knowing as soon as my friends son wakes we may go to Quarter Creek. I almost didn’t go to Quarter Creek, I almost didn’t even take my vacation.
   Abraham’s servant prayed at the well before Rebekah arrived.
     I prayed in the dark the night before the creek.
   We both said the same thing in different words: “if she exists, let her come.”
     She came.

   We left Sloss Lake and headed south… as I was pulling into the parking lot at Quarter Creek… a small sandy beach with a dock off Bear Creek Reservoir in Haleyville, Alabama… Saturday, April 11th …  the first day of my vacation, Kayleigh beside me, nothing on my mind but a quiet morning on the water.
     And that’s when I noticed her.
   I don’t know how to explain a moment like that except to say it happened before I had any say in it. Something caught my attention the way certain things do… not loudly, not dramatically, just undeniably. I noticed Tia the way you notice when the light changes.
     But before I could do anything about it, Kayleigh was already out of the truck.

   My daughter, the youngest of two has always known things before I do.
     She grabbed a few of my things and carried them down to the dock… helpful, purposeful, on a mission only she understood… and then she made her way straight to Tia. No hesitation. No introduction needed, apparently. Just a little girl walking toward a woman she had never met like she already knew her.
   I hung back and watched. I made a few trips back and fourth to my truck.
     They talked. Tia and her step daughter Emma were together, and Kayleigh fell right into conversation with them, completely at ease, completely herself. I listened from a respectful distance, quietly entertained… because Kayleigh, for all her boldness in walking over there, would not tell them her name. Would not tell them her age. Just talked and laughed and kept her identity a complete mystery.
   I walked back to my truck, listened over and solved that particular puzzle for them. Told Tia and Emma that the little ambassador who had appointed herself social director was named Kayleigh, and that she is fourteen years old. There were smiles. There was a brief, easy exchange. And then I went back to cast my line.

   I had promised my friend I’d pick up her son Easton and bring him fishing. So I left Kayleigh at Quarter Creek… assigned her the important duty of guarding my equipment, Tia and Emma volunteered themselves to help keep an eye on her… and I drove to Amber and Tim’s house to get Easton.
     Tim was outside working on his riding mower, tangled up in fencing wire that had wound itself around the blade. I stopped and helped him work on it while waiting for Easton to come outside.
   That errand. That mower. That small detour into an ordinary Saturday afternoon… it was all part of the timing I couldn’t see yet.
     When Easton and I got back to Quarter Creek, I looked across the water and there they were… Kayleigh and Tia on the other side of the beach, wading together, fishing, carrying on like old friends. My daughter, who wouldn’t give a stranger her name an hour ago, was now knee-deep in the water with the woman from the parking lot.
   She knew. She always knew.
     Easton got hot after a while, the way kids do especially sitting in the sun in cowboy boots and jeans, and I took him home. The morning was moving along. The afternoon was settling in. And when I came back to fish some more, Tia had made her way to the dock.
   We exchanged names properly this time. Just that. Simple, unhurried.

   After another hour or so, I decided it was time to go. I made a couple approaches to try conversation with Tia, both conversations was quick. I figured that she had a husband or a boyfriend and she wasn’t interested. When I had everything packed and ready to go, I sat down on the beach with Kayleigh. Hoping that Tia would come sit with us, or start a conversation.
     Tia approached and … we began to talk.
   Not the brief exchange at the dock. Not the introduction through a daughter who wouldn’t share her name. A real conversation… the kind that starts somewhere ordinary and ends up somewhere you didn’t expect. The kind where the afternoon disappears and you don’t notice until the light has shifted.
     Somewhere in that conversation she invited me to her church.
   I said yes.
     And that yes… sitting on a sandy beach in Haleyville, Alabama, with my daughter beside me and a woman I had noticed from a parking lot a few hours earlier… is where everything that has come since began. The church on the second day. The community that undid something in me quietly. The baptism on the last day of my vacation, with Tia standing at the water’s edge.
   Inseparable. That’s how the whole vacation went.
     Inseparable…
       That’s the word. The only word that fits what came after that beach conversation. Not built slowly over months of careful effort. Just… inseparable. The way some things are from the moment they begin, as if they were always meant to be exactly this.
   The night before I had told God I was tired of waiting.
     He had apparently already been working on the answer.

   Rebekah didn’t know she was the answer to a prayer prayed at the same well where she drew water. She was simply being herself… generous, present, going about the business of her day. Her character showed up before her name did.
     Tia is like that.
   There is a warmth to her that doesn’t announce itself… it simply arrives, the way the temperature of a room changes when the right person walks in. She carries it without effort, without performance, without needing anyone to notice. Genuinely, thoroughly herself.
     She has a strength that runs deeper than the surface. The kind forged quietly over time, tested and kept intact. You don’t have to look hard to find it … but she doesn’t wear it loudly either. It’s just there, steady and sure, like bedrock.
   Her faith is not decoration. It is the architecture of how she lives… the thing everything else is built around. Not rigid, not rehearsed, but alive. Breathing. The kind of faith that has been through something and come out still holding on.
     And she is full of life in the truest sense of those words. Not a performance of joy but actual joy. The kind that spills into the space around her and makes that space feel worth inhabiting.
   Warm. Strong. Faithful. Alive.
     The night before I prayed for her without knowing her name.
   The next day I learned it.

   In Luke 5, Simon Peter has fished all night and caught nothing. He is tired. He has done everything right by his own understanding and come up empty. And Jesus gets into his boat and tells him to cast his nets into the deep water.
     Simon’s answer is honest: “we’ve worked all night and caught nothing.” But then … “nevertheless, at Your word, I will.”
   And the nets fill so completely they begin to break.
     I had been out on the water for six years before that vacation. Going through the motions. Coming home empty. And the night before… I had finally said out loud what I hadn’t been able to say before… “I cannot do this anymore. I am done coming up empty.”
   That is its own kind of nevertheless.
     And then one Saturday at a creek… a parking lot, a daughter who ran ahead, an errand to run, a mower blade wrapped in wire, a little girl wading on the far side of the beach, a dock, a … beach, a conversation, a table where I carved our initials… and the nets filled.
   Fast. Completely. In a way I did not see coming and could not have arranged.
     The prayer in the dark was the casting of the net.
Quarter Creek was where it filled.

   The week ended the way it began… at the water.
     On the last day of my vacation I was baptized. And Tia was there. Standing where the water met the edge of the baptistry, witnessing the end of one thing and the beginning of another. The same woman I had noticed from a parking lot on the first day was there at the water on the last.
   I had prayed the night before the creek… and been led to new water by the end of the week.
     That is not a coincidence. That is not luck. That is the specific, unhurried, unshakeable faithfulness of a God who heard a prayer prayed in the dark by a man who wasn’t sure anyone was listening.
   God was listening.
     God had already been working.
   The creek knew before I did.

   Every fisherman has a story about the one that didn’t get away.
     She is warm. She is strong. She is faithful and alive. She was noticed from a driver’s seat while standing in sand, introduced by a daughter who wouldn’t give her own name, found wading on the far side of a beach, met properly at a dock, and known… really known … in a conversation at tables and … on the sand at the end of an afternoon that answered a prayer prayed the night before in the dark.
   I came to Quarter Creek for fish.
     I had prayed the night before for her.
   God said… “both.”
     All three… If you count that she is a Pisces…
   And Kayleigh knew it before either of us did.
     Let this sink in: “I came to Quarter Creek for fish.
I had prayed the night before for her. God said… both. And if you want to count the fact that she’s a Pisces… He was even more literal about it than I realized. Because? … Even the Fish Story was a Fish Story.”

“Lord, You heard me in the dark. You heard me when I was too much for the room and had nowhere left to put what I was carrying. You didn’t ask me to shrink it. You received all of it … every word, every fear, every tired and specific prayer. And then You woke me up the next morning and sent me to a creek. You put Kayleigh in the truck beside me. You wrapped fencing wire around a friends mower blade at just the right moment. You put Tia at the same beach on the same afternoon and You let our eyes meet in a parking lot before either of us spoke a word. You answered the prayer I prayed in the dark with a woman who stands in the light like she was made for it. Thank You for not letting me talk myself out of that vacation, thank you for not letting myself talk me out of Quarter Creek. Thank You for a daughter who ran ahead. Thank You for the creek that led to the church that led to the water that made me new. And thank You for Tia… for her warmth, her strength, her faith, her life, and the word that best describes what we are now. Inseparable. You knew. You always knew. Amen.”

“And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at evening. He lifted his eyes and saw, and behold, there were camels coming. And Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac… Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent and took Rebekah, and she became his wife, and he loved her.”
— Genesis 24:63–64, 67

“Nevertheless, at Your word, I will let down the nets.”
— Luke 5:5

“Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear.”
— Isaiah 65:24

“But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
— Joshua 24:15