Tina Burkholder

My spirit shifted last Thursday. I bought new fish for my tropical tank. I had always wanted a fish tank and several years ago my husband gave me one for Mother’s Day. I dutifully if not meticulously learned how to maintain a healthy tank and have come to view it as a metaphor for my life. In other words, the tank takes energy to maintain—and so some months it looks more beautiful than others.

My pleasure in the tank, amid the daily routine of feeding and checking for any untimely deaths, has remained steady and somewhat nameless. Perhaps the closest description of my attachment to the tank and how it feeds my spirit is the feeling of awe mixed with deep gratitude I experience every time spring comes around and the crocuses bloom again—all on their own volition.

Perhaps I am responding to the way nature takes care of itself and offers itself to me as well as to my own little part in keeping it going. I feed the fish, clean and balance the water. They swim around and be beautiful and secure.

Most recently, however, all the colorful tropical fish were long gone and I had been keeping the two bottom feeders alive with the occasional lettuce pellet. They could have probably lived off the bacteria in the water itself, because, well, let it simply be said that my attention to the cleaning had grown less than admirable. The bottom feeders are the ugly, gray, morose-looking fish that are very shy and sneak up to suck the gunk off the glass in the dead of night, when no one is apt to see them.

Letting the fish tank die a natural death and closing the tank for good never really felt like an option. To let the fish tank go, to give it up, would be symbolically discouraging, if not downright demoralizing and depressing. I could not bear the suggestion that my life was so chaotic and busy, or conversely, so fallow and barren, that I had to shut down the living, colorful, innocence of the aquarium.

So I have agreed with myself that as long as the algae eaters are swimming, and even if they too die, I will not empty the tank. I will be content to wait for the right time to replenish the water.

As part of that decision, I have discovered that God speaks even through tropical fish. The agency for which I work has been fighting the financial struggle of most nonprofits and coming up short. As I tossed around the possibilities and opportunities available to me in the face of work cutbacks, I made the comment to a friend that “I don’t think God really cares where I work.” In the context of the conversation the comment made sense to me, and on some level I continue to believe this, but I was also struck at the sadness evoked in me as I considered my words.

Why the grief? Having found freedom to move away from the judgmental God of my childhood, I wondered if I was traveling toward a view of God that precluded God’s involvement in my life at all.

I no longer believe God has a will for my life that I need to figure out or risk perishing in hell. My beliefs have been moving toward an understanding of God as a spirit within me; to become more “God-like” or “Christ-like” means becoming more of myself, not less—a striking shift from the Mennonite teachings of selflessness, servanthood, and “community at all costs.”

My childhood God was a loving father full of judgment and rules for the right way to live my life. A kind of childhood theme song for me was “Oh be careful little hands what you do. There’s a Father up above looking down on you in love, so be careful little hands what you do.” Thus the movement toward grace and wholeness and away from criticism and never being good enough has felt positive and truly of the Spirit.

Amid that movement, I still don’t believe there is a “right” place for me to be, other than a place where I can work with integrity and meaning and a place that enables me to meet my responsibilities as a parent and family member. But my comment on God’s lack of investment in how I spend 40-45 hours a week caught my attention. I realized it hadn’t occurred to me that God might be a resource to me, could offer guidance, was perhaps able to see the larger picture. Seeking help, guidance, and nurture often doesn’t occur to me in any area of my life. As I faced this, my spiritual solitude and independence saddened me; I questioned the direction of my journey. I began to wonder if I had thrown out the loving father with the judgmental bathwater.

Amid these swirling thoughts, I met with a good friend who listened to my anxiety about writing for his magazine. He assured me of his confidence in the words I might have to say and asked me simply to speak from my journey.

After begging for a prescription (i.e. theme), which Michael gently refused, I decided to leap into the pool and trust that either I could indeed swim or that somehow the water would buoy me.

As I ate lunch with Michael, I knew the time had come to buy the fish for my aquarium. On my way home I bought two black mollies, two red Mickey Mouse fish, and two ruolas.

I felt God’s spirit within me and knew I had shifted and was grateful for the movement and for the sense of God’s hand in my life.

But God had only begun with me. When I came downstairs two days later to check for dead fish (pessimist that I am), I was stunned to discover 16 baby Black Mollies. Over the next week, two more fish had babies. I now have 20-25 baby Black Mollies and Red Mickey Mouse fish playing merrily in the baby cage.

Someone asked me if I view these babies as a blessing. I can only grin and shake my head and say, “Let the waters roll down!”

—Tina Burkholder, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is Director of Foster Care and Adoption at Bethanna. She enjoys reading, gardening, music, and drama. Tina and husband Jay are raising three children.