BE A SALMON
- 5 hours ago
- 2 min read
By Jessica Breazeale
I have no idea why I was dreaming about this, but here we are.This morning I woke up with one thing on my mind: be a salmon. Now, if you know me at all, you know how strange that is. I am not a fisherwoman. You cannot pay me to take a fish off a hook.
My fish are pets — I feed them, nurture them, watch them grow, and the only scenario where I’m eating one of my “pets” is a full-blown apocalypse. So for a salmon dream to shake me awake with a message? That got my attention. I think God was trying to tell me something.
We all know salmon swim upstream. But have you ever stopped to think about why?
It’s not stubbornness. It’s survival — for the next generation. Salmon fight against the current to reach safe, oxygen-rich waters where their eggs can hatch and their young can live. If they just went with the flow, the species would cease to exist.
There’s a word for this in biology: rheotaxis — the tendency of an organism to orient itself and move against a current. And I believe this is exactly what real Christ followers are called to do.
Romans 12:2 says it plainly — “Do not conform to the pattern of this world.” The world has a current. It flows toward self-interest, materialism, and comfort at all costs. The default is to drift. Easy, culturally comfortable Christianity isn’t discipleship. It’s just floating downstream with a cross bumper sticker on your back.
Real rheotaxis starts with orientation — figuring out which way the water is flowing before you move. For me, that’s prayer and scripture.
Discernment comes before direction. Really feel the current to know which way is different (or upstream).
Then comes the effort. Swimming upstream costs something — energy, comfort, sometimes relationships. Carrying a cross was never meant to be a metaphor for mild inconvenience.
But here’s what’s remarkable: for the salmon, that upstream fight eventually becomes instinct. For believers, that instinct gets cultivated through the Holy Spirit renewing our minds day after day until swimming against the current becomes who you are to the core, not just what you occasionally try to do.
And then there’s the part that really gets me. The salmon exhausts itself fighting upstream, reaches its destination…and dies there. Costly. Purposeful. Complete.
Here’s what I believe: real living isn’t found here on Earth. We’re on this planet for just a moment, just a breath. What I’m swimming upstream for is what’s coming — the Kingdom, eternity, and the people I’m hoping come with me. If we drift, they drift. If we fight upstream, we leave behind a path, a witness, a faith worth passing on.
So the question I woke up with, and I’ll leave it with you: Which way are you swimming?
The current will always take you somewhere. But if you want the life that’s real living, then be a salmon.
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