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by Pam Mueller

Confessions of a Sometimes Dog Lover

This article is dedicated to my 5-pound black poodle, Rocky.
If you are a dog-lover, you are probably smiling and anticipating his cuteness. If you don’t like dogs, you may be wondering why I’m wasting a whole article on my dog. This article is for both of you because—here is my first confession—I love my dog, but only sometimes.

He is cute. Small enough to fit in my lap, he loves to play and chase the ball and knows how to communicate without words. He’s a great snuggler, and provides lots of entertainment. But then again, he is a dog. Just now he was licking his crotch. Ten minutes ago he barfed on my carpet. Helllooo, Rocky, there might be a connection between the two.

What amazes me about this little furball with a walnut-sized brain is how much I learn from him. Rocky is an adventurer at heart, and will escape from our yard any chance he gets. The problem with this is that sometimes he comes back injured, or flea-infested, or he leaves right as I’m headed to work, and I end up being late from trying to get him home. So for his protection and our sanity, we tether him on a long leash in our back yard. Almost daily he gets his leash tangled as he weaves in and out of our patio furniture, gazebo, planters. He has a special bark that lets me know he is tangled and needs help—it’s higher pitched, as if he’s saying, “Hey, I’m stuck, come help me! Come now!”

So I go out to the patio, irritated that he’s interrupting my life again; and irritated that he can figure out how to escape and navigate the labyrinth of yards and dog friends that he visits, but he can’t figure out the tangled leash thing. And I untangle his leash, mostly because he won’t stop barking, but with a little affection because sometimes I love him.

Then I hear a loving Voice in my head and my heart that says, “You’re a lot like him, you know.” Here’s my second confession: sometimes I’m not much smarter than my dog. Whether it’s through bad decisions, not learning from my mistakes, or habits I can’t seem to break, I get my life all tangled up. I weave in and out of the pressures of life, and I end up at the end of my rope; pulling, but I can’t get unstuck.

Here Rocky teaches me that the best thing to do is to admit I’m stuck and call for help. I have a Master who loves me all the time, because I’m His, not according to how smart or “not so smart” I‘m acting. My Master can untangle any mess I’ve fallen into and can teach me how to avoid the same trap next time, even when I’m a slow learner.

Apart from his messes, I love Rocky’s capacity to adore. He adores my husband, Mark, the alpha male in our home. In Rocky’s world, Mark hangs the moon. (OK, he does in my world too, and that’s a true confession.) Wherever Mark is, that’s where Rocky wants to be. Rocky lives as if his purpose is to love and follow Mark.

One day as I vacuumed the hallway, Mark walked past me to get to our bedroom. This presented Rocky with a dilemma. Rocky is afraid of the vacuum. To follow Mark, he would have to get dangerously close to the vacuum. Rocky walked slowly to the edge of the hallway and crouched, ready to make a run for it as soon as the vacuum was far enough away to get around it safely. Then he backed off as the vacuum came back his direction. Then he crouched, waiting for his opening to get down the hallway.

OK, I’ll admit I decided to make a game of it. I began steering the vacuum to see what he would do. About the time it looked like Rocky might get crazy and go for a wild run down the hallway, I would steer the vacuum back his way and watch him back up.

Now, my confession is not that I have nothing better to do than tease my dog; it’s more guttural than that. My confession: like Rocky, sometimes I let my fears keep me from going after what I was created to do. It’s a risk to follow the One I love, and sometimes I forget that He is bigger than the things I fear. Being with Him is worth any pain I might encounter in following Him.

It’s strange to learn life lessons from a dog, especially a cute dog that I only love sometimes and who is trying to lick my hand (not cool after crotch-licking and barfing), even as I’m typing. But it could be worse. I could own a cat. And that would lead to a lot of other confessions.

“If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.” James 1:5

Sun Rise

I waited for you today.
Many days I ignore you
Unaware of your rhythm
Except to complain of your excess
Heat that burns my comfort
And drives me indoors.

But not today, I waited.
Standing in the chill
Moving for a better glimpse
I willed the churning earth
To spin toward you, impatient
That you would fit into my sense of time.

Every day I wait.
I just don’t know it when
I lay my life out by
Calendar and clock that tell me
How to live this journey in
Broken, segregated, hurried chunks.

Hurried by my devices, I wait.
I follow them as they mark
The long wait for eternity.
Enterprise and noise fill the mind
And senses forget where the life is found
The Source of all real living.

But today I know why
I wait behind the burgundy clouds
Straining to glimpse the glory untouchable
That you reflect in your brilliance
Gift essential to all of life
Pointing to the greater Majesty.

Fire and Foam

Fire and Foam

I saw the waves on fire today.
White hot flashes of glory.

Ocean blue, first swelling, now foaming.
Always in a tug-of-war between moon and shores.
Who can measure you? Who can tame you?
Who can know your creatures and your depths?

Morning sun, light untouchable.
Light to walk by, light to see, light to form our food.
Without you, there’d be no color.
Sometimes you burn the living down to a shrivel.

Two mysteries dance together,
And I am undone.
A glimpse into the greater, truer reality.
A peek at holiness.

I want to see.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. 

Theodore Roosevelt

Lessons from a Food Processor

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I started out with good intentions. I wanted to make a chocolate-banana smoothie for the family for breakfast. My first obstacle came in the form of a dirty blender. This wouldn’t have been a problem except that I was in a hurry.

I quickly made a Plan B: I pulled out the food processor, wondering why I don’t use it more often. After locking in all the parts, I poured in the chocolate shake and added banana chunks. When I turned on the machine, nothing happened. I checked the outlet in the wall, the locking mechanism, everything I could think of, and still no movement at all. As I lifted the container off of the processor, I discovered a chocolate puddle. More investigation revealed a line on the side of the food container that says, “Maximum liquid line”. Oops! I had added more liquid than the container would hold, so it leaked down through the mechanisms that turn the motor.

This was about the moment my husband walked into the kitchen. He laughed. I told him what I thought about his laughter.

So I washed the blender and made a smoothie. Then I washed the food processor, the counter, and laid the machine on its side so the chocolate ooze could drain back out of the motor. The smoothie tasted great, and the food processor eventually recovered–it still works!

Here’s what I learned from my food processor mess:

1. Messes happen. They are a part of life. I should expect messes and spend less energy trying to ignore them.

2.Sometimes shortcuts aren’t really shortcuts. The things I do to save time often stem from impatience, not ingenuity.

3. Good intentions don’t ensure success. But it’s still good to have good intentions!

4. Sometimes people laugh at my mistakes. What matters is how I respond to my own mistakes.

5. It takes time to clean up messes. That’s OK. It’s worth the effort.

6. Good things can come out of my messes.

7. There is more than one way to reach a goal, so keep trying and don’t give up.

Dear Mark

Soon we will celebrate 28 years of marriage.

As we approach this milestone, we’ve both had conversations with friends asking, how do you stay together that long? We don’t have any simple, fail-proof answers because relationships don’t work that way. But still it has me wondering.

What makes a marriage of 28 years?

10,220 days.       245,280 hours.      14,716,800 minutes.       883,008,000 seconds.

883,008,000 seconds. We are well on our way to a billion seconds. Why measure a marriage in seconds? Because our thoughts run in seconds, and how we both think is how we make a marriage. Thank you for thinking well of me and expressing it. Thank you for loving me in those moments that I’ve displayed “stinkin thinkin”. Thank you for being humble enough to admit when your own thinking is wrong. Thank you for allowing thoughts of honor and trust and hope to prevail in those moments when your emotions are running hard in another direction. Thank you for thinking for our marriage instead of against it.

14,716,800 minutes. Why measure a marriage in minutes? Because most things we do take minutes. I can’t count the small ways you have loved me with your actions. Quick phone calls in the middle of your busy to ask me how my day is going. Small gifts randomly given just because you thought of me. My dishwashing, lawnmowing, enchilada making, toilet fixing, laundry starting best friend is what you are. And how many minutes have we spent talking and listening to each other? Too many to count. These aren’t measures of your love, but tangible expressions of it. Thank you for loving me with your minutes.

245,280 hours. Hours are how we spend our time. I know your billable hourly rate, so I can say without doubt that marrying me is the most expensive thing you’ve ever done. Thank you for lavishly spending hours with me. And what fun we’ve had! Walks around the neighborhood, through parks, on mountain trails, down unfamiliar city streets. Adventures of bike rides and snorkeling, kayaking, snowshoeing. Good food and good loving, travel and discovery–I would spend it all again on you.

10,220 days. How do you measure a marriage in days? Some days are tough, many are forgettable. A few golden days get etched in our memories. But each new day is a new beginning, a script waiting to be written by the grace that we receive and by the choices that we make. For 10,220 days we have both said (consciously or unconsciously), “I choose you.” I choose you over all others. I choose you in the midst of a hundred other things vying for my attention. I choose you even when the wheels seem to be falling off. Thank you for choosing me. I still choose you.

Happy Anniversary, my best friend and lover, father to my children, strong man of faith.

I respect you more with each passing year. And I thank God for His grace that carries us and for giving me the gift of you.

Love,

Pam

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