Sam I Am...

More musings from life-in-real-time...my inside thoughts are running on overdrive the last couple days. 

I walked through the living room yesterday and saw DW standing at the back door, looking outside, chuckling to himself.  "What are you laughing at?" I say.  His simple reply: "Sam."  I looked out the window to see this:

Laying out...

I couldn't help but laugh, too, because we think its so weird that his legs can do that!  It's like two paws are growing out of his butt.  DW started scrambling for the camera, hoping Samson wouldn't move before we could get a picture of the way he always sits.

I'm sure it's crazy to people who haven't had pets...and even probably people who have had pets...how much I love these pups, I bet.  But to me, there is something so pure about the kind of love they give...never self-seeking, always aware of the emotions of others, they never, ever hold a grudge, they forgive wrongs against them almost immediately, they are always happy to see you, their eyes spill over with love and affection...I could go on!  I admire those qualities.  I just think how much better of a wife I could be to DW if I could exhibit half of those qualities on a daily basis.  

I'm such a visual person, such a feeler that I find God speaks to me in every-day-ordinary-things more than I find Him in other places.  I rarely get the "big reveal".  It's usually just quiet things that I feel is a private conversation between God and I.  I'm very Jack-and-Jill-went-up-the-hill in my faith.  He uses things like my dogs and windstorms or a combination of dogs and windstorms to teach me sometimes.  It's deeper than that, obviously, but I want to believe like a child, see the world like a child...and then use my gifts like the adult I am.  For example?  Back to the I-wish-I-were-more-like-my-dog-scenario...

Forgiveness.   Yesterday's post got me thinking a bit more about this.

Sam has an accident in the bedroom and I get upset with him, tell him to "kennel up" and when he does get inside, I slam the kennel door closed, smack the top of the kennel for emphasis and yell, "Bad boy!"  As I'm walking out, I flick the light to the basement on and off, on and off, and then walk out and slam the door...again, with the emphasis.  I'm dramatic like that.  :-)  Once I'm back upstairs, I realize that it wasn't Sam that did it at all, it was Tucker. I walk back downstairs, let him out, and even though I just banged on his kennel, yelled at him for something he didn't even do, and turned the lights on and off and slammed the door on him...I hear thump thump thump.  His tail is banging against the sides of the kennel and he's actually happy to see me.  

New scenario (this requires a bit of imagination but welcome to my weirdo brain)...just read it a lot faster this time:

DW has an accident in the bedroom and I get upset with him, tell him to "kennel up" and, when he does get inside, I slam the kennel door closed, smack the top of the kennel for emphasis and yell, "Bad boy!" As I'm walking out, I flick the light to the basement on and off, on and off, and then walk out and slam the door...again, with the emphasis. I'm dramatic like that. :-) Once I'm back upstairs, I realize that it wasn't DW that did it at all, it was Tucker. I walk back in, let him out, and even though I just banged on his kennel, yelled at him for something he didn't even do, and turned the lights on and off on him and slammed the door on him...I definitely don't hear the proverbial thump thump thump. For one, obviously, he doesn't have a tail.  For two, I hurt his pride, mistreated him for something he didn't even do, I probably didn't handle my anger that great...and human nature is that we are slower to forgive and that we tend to harbor wrongs against us.  

Not so with Sam...it's instant forgiveness because of his very nature.  He loves me as much after that scenario as he did before that and it will never enter his mind again.  He will never hold it against me, he will never judge me for how I handled a situation, he will never fault me.  He forgives my every wrong against him and he has no expectation for me to be perfect.  He will forgive me a 100 times over because He loves me. 

It is truly my belief that God's love, His nature...is much like that.  Too often I catch myself thinking of God as having a nature like me and I believe that couldn't be further from the truth.  I'm called to have a nature like Him. I am made in His image but I often think of my own flaws like anger, unforgiveness, emotional distance and expect them to be qualities He would manifest.  No matter what happens or what we do, if I approach Him and I am truly sorry for those actions (even if I have to do it over and over with the same thing), He's ready to forgive me.  Instantly - no matter what we have done - we only have to ask and it's like it never happened.  

Now, that's some good Jack-and-Jill Bible truth right there. 

Backing up, DW is pretty good about instant forgiveness as well.  Me, not so much.  I used to smolder for days at small slights.  I used to abandon friendships completely for big wrongs - because I used to think it was easier to never get hurt again than to risk it.  (Not to say there aren't toxic people that you should remove from your life. But I believe even in those situations I will choose not to harbor bitterness in my heart toward them.)  Oh man, how God has changed me in the last several years. 

I want to react to someone the way they react to me but an old Bible verse comes to mind: A kind word turns away wrath.

I want to speak to someone the way they spoke to me but something my Mom used to say stirs in my spirit: You can't control others.  The only person you can control...the only person you can change...is you.  

I want to walk away from a friendship because I am so so so afraid of vulnerability.  DW's counsel from when we were new friends rings in my ears: if you don't let someone authentically know you, then you won't be able to experience someone authentically loving you, either.  

I sit here on the couch, typing because its a bit like therapy and an old hymn comes to mind from when my feet still barely reached past the end of the pew: Oh how He loves you, Oh how He loves me...Oh how He loves you and me.  And, yup, all this started with looking out the window at a dog.  It's just the way my mind works.  I never said I wasn't a little bit weird.