I found it! I found my passion! (Have you lost yours?)

I recently rediscovered fly fishing and am glad I did. It had been well over 20 years since I last picked up a fly rod and to be honest I had become comfortable fishing with my spin cast set up or tossing a worm and a bobber in the water and waiting for a strike. I say it was comfortable, but it still lacked some of the passion and enjoyment and could be a little boring. This is probably why I didn’t fish too much, despite living on a river. Typically I fished only when the kids wanted to fish. Of all the outdoor articles I have written, never once have I written about fishing. It had become so distant to me even the annual Bass Pro fishing catalogs went straight to the recycle bin. This is odd, especially for me: I grew up fishing in northern Michigan. I lived on a lake and had a boat. I went ice fishing in the winter and I skipped my senior prom in high school because it interfered with trout season.

An event happened recently that led me to pick up the fly rod again. I’ll write more about that in another blog but since returning to fly fishing I have rediscovered my love and passion for being on (or in) the water. I dug through the recycle bin to find the Bass Pro catalogs, I have a sudden urge to watch “The River Runs Through It” over and over again, and I can’t stop talking about nymphs, larvae stages, deer hair, and tippet.

I have discovered just how therapeutic and relaxing fly fishing can be as well as the almost artistic aspect there is to the sport. I can even draw a number of similarities between fly fishing and turkey hunting. Maybe that is why this diehard beard-buster really enjoys it. They are really quite a bit alike when it comes down to it; minus the shotgun of course.

What passion have you lost or forgotten about? Is there something you once enjoyed or once loved to do so much it helped to define you?

Our faith can be a lot like that. Many of us were raised in church, went to Sunday school, and were members of the youth group. Maybe you even sang in the choir and went to camp. Over the years, however, college, family, career, or any number of things caused you to drift away from what at one point was very important to you. Today the idea of “church” doesn’t excite you much.

Instead of your faith, maybe it’s a relationship. Maybe you and your spouse have drifted further apart and the passion is gone.

Jesus, with help of the Apostle John, addressed this same issue with one group of people long ago. He said, “I have this one thing against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember, therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first” (Revelation 2:4-5)

Sound familiar? He says, in a nutshell, “You lost what you once loved. So remember the good times, change course, and go back and do what you once loved to do”.

Rediscover your passion: whether it is faith, family or fly fishing, life is too short and too precious to live without it.