Losing It

I was reading an article on Bassmaster.com about how Mike Iaconelli (IKE) has admitted he has an anger problem (read article here) and is seeking help with it from a sports psychologist.  It made me stop and think.  Last Saturday I was fishing the Fishing for Charities event on Smith Mountain Lake when I defiantly had an Ike moment.

I can say it was not my best moment…could almost be my worst moment.  The fishing was tuff, I mean really tuff.  My wife fished with me as it was a team tournament and by 11:30 we had no fish in the boat.  I was beginning to feel the pressure of the day.  We pulled into a small cove and after a half hour my wife landed are first and only bass of the day.  It began to renew the pain I was dealing with not having a bass.

But after another two hours and a bunch of miss haps like birds nest in two rods so bad I could not pick them out and seeing a bunch of bass that had no intrest in biting anything I was throwing I lost it.  I attempted to make a cast with a spinning reel and got another mess of line.  That’s when it happened.  I snapped, and snapped a rod over my knee (yup you read it right a rod over my knee).  Then a bunch of words fell from my mouth that I can’t repeat and the broken rod took a swim in the lake.

Not my finest moment, looking back I feel like a tool.  I was fishing near a dock and there was a little old lady working on her flowers 400 yards up near her house.  I wish I could take that moment back, I feel so bad about it.  I didn’t show that women I was a Christian.  She saw me for 20 minutes at most and I’m sure she thought stupid punk kid.

I surly lived up to what Proverbs 14:17 says: “A quick-tempered person does foolish things,
and the one who devises evil schemes is hated.”

I have worked hard not to be quick tempered because before becoming a Christian I was very quick tempered and I knew that it was something I needed to work on.  However here I was in a boat cussing at myself breaking a rod and tossing it in the lake (I did fish it out before I left…I didn’t want to liter). 

I know what I did was wrong and trust me I asked God for forgiveness, and if I could have figured out how to contact the little old lady and tell her I was sorry I would have done that too.  I hope you think about me and my stupid mistake the next time the temptation is there to fly off the handle and follow my lead instead be the bigger person I couldn’t be that day.