Columbus Got Me Thinking...

 About life and Amy Grant.

First a touch of a history lesson. Christopher Columbus was born in 1451. He sailed for the Crown of Castile. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. The journey in 1492 was the first of four round trips. The Crown of Castille promised to back Columbus if he finished the journey. He took three ships. Two caravels, The Santa Clara (Nicknamed the Nina) and the Pinta were piloted by the Pinzon brothers Martin and Vicente ( hey my name is Pinson, I wonder if we're related) The Santa Maria, a carrack and slightly bigger vessel was captained by Columbus. 

He first went to the Canary Islands to stock. Columbus hoped to reach the East Indies and open trade routes, but his calculations were a touch off. And he sailed to the Bahamas instead. There he traveled the islands. During the voyage from island to island, Martin took the Pinta for a time because he heard there was gold and the Santa Maria ran aground. But Columbus continued and gained new ground for Spain and was given land and roles in leadership for himself and brothers and sons who sailed with him. He sailed to Cuba, Bahamas, Hispanolia (Haiti, Dominican Republic) and all over the Caribbean.  Later in life all he'd won from the crown was stripped from him. He was thrown in jail under allegations of genocide and torture. He took the royals to court for several years because he felt they'd reneged on a promised. There is so much more of course, but I said a short history lesson…

Back in the 1950's my father served in the US Marines and was engaged to my aunt. Well, she wasn't my aunt at the time, 'cause I wasn't even born. But you know what I mean. She's my aunt now. Anyway, he left to go on a cruise and came back to find my aunt planned to marry his brother, my uncle.

My sisters and cousins and I sat around one night speculating how it might have been if my father and aunt (their mother) were married as first planned. How would we look?

Truth was, we probably wouldn't have been born.

By now you're probably wondering what in the world this has to do with Columbus and his journey.

Well, Amy Grant has this song out called Galileo. You know the smart guy who studied the stars? Now we have Galileo, Columbus, my father, my aunt, and Amy Grant. Do you understand yet?

I know. I know. It's still as clear as mud.

Back to Amy Grant and her song Galileo. The lyrics go something like this;

In the year of fourteen ninety-two

When Columbus sailed the ocean blue

Had he landed on India's shore

You might never have come to knock on my door.

Who needs a rhyme or a reason

Some dreams were made to find

So I know that I must follow

Ask me just how much I love you

You are starlight, I'm Galileo

Even on the darkest night oh

I will find the shining light of our love.

So there I was thinking about Columbus and how things might be if he'd reached India first. Just how different would the world be?

I'm working on a speculative fiction series called Counting Tessa. Complete with clones, gene mutation, and time travel. Where the good guys are trying to keep the bad guys from changing the past and disrupting the future. And the whole thing can get rather mind boggling.

Take any point or person in history and change one simple thing. For example, how would the world be if Abraham Lincoln hadn't been shot? You were never born? And dinosaurs didn't die?

How would the world look? We'd probably be lunchmeat if the dinosaurs were still around. Or perhaps, with technology, we'd have found a way to coexist and maybe we'd be selling dino meat like the Flinstones.

But this is life as I know it. This is how my journey was mapped out.

I was born in Mississippi. My husband in Georgia. My father was in the military so we traveled around the world, living in places like Germany and Turkey. We also lived in several different states. My husband resided in Georgia until he was twelve before he moved to Colorado. We met in youth group 5 years later, and then he came to knock on my door to give me birthday kiss a few months after that. I wasn't home of course, but that's a different story.

Just think of the journey that brought us together. I crossed vast oceans several times and yet we didn't just pass like ships in the night. Amazingly, we ended up together.

My sister's story goes like this; Dad was stationed in Turkey and we lived in Izmir. We met a young couple there and became good friends.

 We did a lot of shopping at the Konak Marketplace












And lived somewhere around here.

 When Dad's tour was up, my parents thought we should take a road trip before settling and decided to stop in Opheim, Montana to see friends we'd met while dad was stationed there. From there we'd make a loop back to Denver where Dad was retiring and we'd live.

The wife of the young couple in Turkey asked us to stop in and say hello to her family who lived in Mohall, North Dakota on our way past. Her mother was happy to see us and hear news from her daughter and asked us to check in on her son who had just moved, you guessed it, to Denver, Colorado.

Her son came to visit and a couple years later he and my sister were married. Different journeys. One traveler went to far off, exotic places. One traveler never left North Dakota until that time. There is no rhyme or reason to them finding one another. The odds they'd meet are probably a gazillion to one? Yet, their paths crossed and all because Columbus took that wild ride across the ocean in 1492.

Well, that and God's plan of course.

What's your story?

Be sure to leave a comment along with your email address, as one commenter gets to choose one of my ebooks.

Tina Pinson has authored of several books, historical and contemporary, including: In the Manor of the Ghost, Touched By Mercy, To Carry her Cross, When Shadows Fall, Shadowed Dreams, Then There Was Grace, and To Catch a Shadow. Look for Black Rain and This Shadowed Land soon. Tina's writing credits include poetry and songs and articles, one of her songs, You Never Stop Loving Me, placed in a national contest. She won a contest for a commercial jingle.
Tina resides in Arizona with her husband of thirty plus years, Danny. They have three sons, and seven grandchildren. She took a course through the Children's Writing Institute and is a member of ACFW. She has done public speaking and teaching. She loves to doodle, enjoys gardening and prays her stories will transport you to worlds beyond, touching your spirit and giving you a closer insight to yourself and God. Learn more about Tina at http://tinapinson.blogspot.com or find her on Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/TinaEPinsonAuthor