The Secret Life of Pets

I need a GoFundMe to get me one of these sweeties. Watson needs a brother.

Anyone who knows my Dad, Virgil, knows how much he loves dogs. I think I inherited that love for them from him. Growing up, we had some amazing dogs–some I loved in person, and some I loved in stories told after they crossed the rainbow bridge.

One afternoon when I was in the 7th or 8th grade, I was walking home from school in Korea, and I saw a dalmatian on the side of the hill. I was in love immediately. He was the sweetest, gentlest, most friendly guy. Now in Korea, dogs were not pets until recent history. So seeing a BIG dog like that was rare, and seeing one that was a breed I knew was just as rare.

Well… because I have the best/worst luck in the world, I went home and told my parents… and within a few days, Toby came to live at our house. See, Toby’s first owners were looking to re-home him. So as fate would have it, Toby was ours.

I absolutely loved that dog. He was smart. At night, he would wait until my parents went to sleep, and he would sneak up the stairs from his bed in the entry to my room and sleep with me. When he heard my dad get up to turn on the hot water heater, he would sneak back down stairs.

Toby made my transition from awkward new 7th grader at my school to awkward returning 8th grader at my school. He heard my sorrows, he licked my tears, he loved me when I wasn’t sure what there was about me to love. I wish I had a picture of Toby. He was the goodest of boys.

He died when I was in the 9th or 10th grade. He had kidney stones and the Korean vet had no clue how to help him… and in the end it was kinder for him to pass than it was to keep him with us.

When I achieved adulthood, my goal was to finally get a dog of my own. It wasn’t a house. It wasn’t a car. It wasn’t a specific job. It was a dog. And when I was 30, I got Wally.

He was the goodest of boys. At first I loved him but wanted someone to take him off my hands. He was needy. He was exhausting.

He was a puppy.

He also was my confidant. He heard my woes, he heard my joys, he heard my rants… and of course he was the best secret keeper. None of the things I told him ever made their rounds. He helped me through hard times–times I wondered if they would ever end.

And when he crossed the rainbow bridge, I never thought I could want another dog again.

And then I met Buddy Watson.

He is so different than Wally was–but he is just as good of a listener.

And he has helped me through the hardest time of my life. Over the last 7 months of my life, he has snuggled my hours of sleeping away. He has licked my tears–no matter how much I try to stop the face licking. He has heard me rail with frustration, sing with praise, and fall with exhaustion into a deep sleep.

I haven’t written in a while–mostly because I am so busy. And mostly because I haven’t had much to say. I have been in a holding pattern–between treatments and waiting for the MRI that would tell me if the drugs were doing their jobs.

It was 3 months of panic every time I had a headache that another lesion was forming. It was 3 months of second guessing my loss of balance. 3 months of looking for signs where there were none.

And Watson was there for it all. He made me get out of bed to take him potty. Or to the vet when he got chewing gum on his toe nail and I thought it was an infection. ($50 later, the vet and I both had a good story…) He went with me everywhere–to my parents, or my sisters… and never complained about my driving. God had given me this guy to look at and to talk to when I was really talking to God.

Funny how that worked out. When my faith felt lost, God used something I love to bring me comfort. Sometimes God gives us the tangible because He knows our faith needs something we can hold onto, something we can see, and something we can touch. (But… sometimes He doesn’t.) I guess for me, that seems to come in the form of dogs. That is truly their secret calling, I think.

This need of mine–to have something to see, feel, touch, and hold–didn’t make me a faith failure. Instead, it reminded me that I am human.

I had forgotten, for a brief span of 3 months, how big our God is. I was so assured and so embraced from March to July. During the hardest time of my life–the time when walking away would have been what some people had chosen–I drew nearer. I loved God more and felt more loved by God than I have before.

And I don’t know what happened. All of a sudden I was living a life of what if’s and fear. What if I do have another lesion? What if I do have to go in to the hospital again? What if these symptoms never fully go away?

And instead of saying, “It’s ok if it’s another lesion. God is not surprised.” I said, “I am scared.” Instead of looking at another hospital stay as an opportunity for God to enrich my story and my faith, I saw it as a sign of yet another failure of my body. Instead of using these symptoms as an opportunity to rely on God’s strength, I saw them as proof that I was not in control of anything. (And boy was I right on that one…)

But our God–He is BIG. He is the BIGGEST. And when I limit my thinking, my hope, my faith, I limit God. When I said, “What if it’s another lesion?” What I was really saying is, “God isn’t big enough for this…” When I said, “I don’t want to go back to the hospital!” What I was really saying is, “I won’t follow you there, God.” And when I saw these symptoms as hopeless, I was saying to God that He could not fix this.

My faith limited how I saw God. But… God didn’t let that limit stand.

Today I got the best possible news from my neurologist. She said my MRI scans showed that my MS is stable. Stable. Not a word I ever thought would bring me joy. But they brought me joy and thanksgiving.

And clarity. If I had been struck in the head by a 2×4 it couldn’t have been more clear–God is bigger than my fear. God is bigger than my MS. God is bigger than my faith.

And God is bigger than your fear too.