Upstream ALL the way!!

Alaska, oh, I love my Alaska!  When I was a girl and the salmon were running, I remember my Dad driving us somewhere to see the stream filled with salmon.  Somewhere?  where was this Somewhere place?  I remember also seeing huge fish jumping up out of the water and fighting their way upstream. We lived in Anchorage when I was that young girl.  Would I have seen a spectacular sight like that at Ship Creek, Bird Creek, Chugach, Eklutna, Eagle River?  Was it on the way to Palmer?  Truly, I'm drawing a blank!

A couple of years back, while we were at our annual visit to Leavenworth, we visited the Fish Hatchery.  Salmon migration was stopped by the building of Grand Coulee Dam so the hatchery met the need of a home to start in and end in.  Birth and eventual death.  When I looked into the holding pen of the beat-up, worn-out, gouged-out spots, salmon- just waiting to die- I thought they endured the race, they fought a good fight.  They accomplished what their purpose was.  To be born, live, return home to die.

Rather eerie that I can identify with a salmon living out it's life purpose!  eggs, to fingerling, growing, maturing and gathering survival strength, and finally striking out for home to create a family, fulfilling that purpose, and dying.  Yes.  sounds very familiar.

Making adjustments along the way, including physical adjustments that enables them to make the transition of water types.  It wears me out to even think of it and yet I can so easily grasp the difficulty of....swimming UPSTREAM!!  ALL the way!  Fighting that flowing water and even achieving the impossible and leaping up powerful waterfalls!  True, some die on the journey but the majority make it- even battered and bruised and torn up and their purpose is fulfilled. 

Salmon have many varieties.  I've heard of silvers, pinks, reds, kings, Chinook, chum, coho and sockeye.  There are probably many others that are new to me.  These are familiar sounding names.

Me? I left that pre-mortal heavenly place, arrived on earth with my own uniqueness of skin tone, grew to adult size, struck out on my own, had a family, and daily fight my own uphill battle, in my effort to return to the home from whence I came.  Sounds a little fishy doesn't it?  But it's true!! 

I have the salmon-like determination to fight all odds to return back home!! 

Just like you, at the end, I want to say.....

I have fought a good fight,

I have finished my course,

I have kept the faith:

                                  (2 Tim. 4:7)