Seriously

Yesterday morning, P got up exceptionally early and headed down to the ranch. He had a bunch of things down there that needed to be done and now that it’s stopped raining, he had no excuse to not go ahead and work in the mosquito-infested swamp that is now South Texas.

When Caroline and I woke up about an hour later, I walked by the back door and noticed our dogs weren’t on the back porch. I didn’t think anything of it because, first of all, I don’t think about anything that early in the morning, and secondly, I assumed P had taken them with him to the ranch because he usually does. Caroline and I went on with our morning routine of debating what constitutes a breakfast food and if, in fact, York Peppermint Patties offer any nutritional value, while watching Handy Manny have a lengthy conversation with a hammer.

Between Diego, Dora and Manny, there is really no end to Noggin’s desire to help my child become bilingual, even if it is in the context of having a monkey for a best friend while climbing up Jaguar mountain and visiting with a socket wrench.

Anyway, P called about 45 minutes after we were up to see how our morning was going. I told him it was the usual, I was getting Caroline dressed and ready for her morning at Mother’s Day Out or as I like to call it, Mama Needs Some Quiet. Then, I casually said, “I assume you have the dogs with you.”

And to pull out a tired phrase, I assume y’all know what happens when you assume.

“No, I don’t have the dogs. Are they not in the backyard?”

“Umm, I don’t think so.”

So, I ran out on the back porch and started calling the dogs.

Nothing.

Caroline is following me and just beside herself at the drama that is playing out right before her very eyes. Finally, Scout comes walking up from the other side of the yard, but Bruiser is nowhere to be found. Fortunately, all my yelling for the dogs has attracted the attention of my friends, the construction workers across the street, who, honestly, know more about what happens at our house than we do. In fact, one of them told me they realized when they got to work this morning that Bruiser wasn’t in the yard because he always greets them in the morning. I’m telling y’all it’s just a matter of time before we invite them to all our family functions and Caroline starts calling them “Uncle Tito”.

I tell P that Bruiser is missing and we realize he must have gotten out when P’s employees came by earlier to pick up some equipment they needed. I hurried up and finished getting Caroline dressed and ready and, since we still had some time before MDO started, I drove around the neighborhood while Caroline and I both yelled, “BRUISER! BRUISER!!!”, but he was nowhere to be found. As I walked Caroline to her classroom, she looked up at me and said, “Mama, WHY would Bruiser want to leave our family?”

We said a prayer that Bruiser would come home, I kissed her goodbye and then left to go look for the dog.

I spent my 3 free hours driving, walking, calling all over our neighborhood. P pulled his guys off the job site so that they could drive around and look, and he headed home from the ranch to join the search. Even Gulley and her boys joined our search committee.

No Bruiser.

And I can promise y’all it wasn’t for lack of effort.

Finally, it was time to pick up Caroline from school and as soon as I walked in the door, her teacher asked me if I found our dog because it was all Caroline talked about all morning. In fact, she was even stopping people in the hallway to tell them our tale of pet loss woe and asked for prayer for Bruiser in chapel. I told the teacher that we hadn’t found Bruiser and she gave me a look that conveyed she was mentally calculating the years of therapy that Caroline was going to require due to all the pet negligence.

On the way home, I explained that it was really hot and Bruiser was probably just resting somewhere and would come home later on. Then, P came home and had to get something out of our backhouse. He opened the door and I discovered I was right. Bruiser was resting. IN OUR BACKHOUSE.

He’d been there the WHOLE TIME. THE WHOLE TIME.

I spent precious, free hours that could have been used to weigh the merits of Mossimo vs. Merona in the aisles at Target, looking for a dog that wasn’t even lost. But I wasn’t the only one looking.

P has two guys working for him right now, Gus and Shorty. Normally, Gus runs his own business, but he has been helping P out for the last week, so he and Shorty just met last week. Gus is an awesome Christian man. He’s just one of those people that exudes kindness and gentleness from every pore and if you spend 2 seconds with him, he’ll tell you the source of all his joy and happiness is his faith in Jesus.

Shorty is a little bit of a rough character. I don’t even know his whole story, but I know that life has been hard. He’s done a lot of really rough living and always seems a little beaten down.

Yesterday, when the dog went missing, Gus and Shorty spent 4 hours together, just the two of them, riding around in Gus’s truck looking for Bruiser. And Gus told P later, that while Shorty thought he was just looking for a dog, Gus showed him he was looking for something else. Hope. Joy. Peace.

So, Gus talked to him about God, about the hope found in Jesus, and Shorty listened. He really listened. And when P apologized to Gus for sending them on a mission to look for a dog that wasn’t even lost, Gus told him it didn’t matter because God used that time to make sure that Shorty was found.

I overheard Gus telling P the whole story as they stood on the back porch, I thought about what I’d just read in my study of “Jesus, The One and Only” earlier in the day. Beth Moore was talking about the miracle of the loaves and fishes and how when the need for food arose, Jesus tested his disciples by asking them how they were going to feed the hungry people. The disciples had seen Jesus turn water to wine, heal the lame, raise the dead and yet they were stumped by how on earth He was going to manage to feed all these thousands of people.

Jesus was testing them to see if they understood His ability to provide in every aspect of life. To quote the study, “Christ was teaching them to see Him, His power, and His authority in every area of life.” Then, she asked about ways in which our faith is fragmented.

I realized that earlier in the day, I had told Caroline to pray that we’d find Bruiser and I prayed that we’d find Bruiser, but I kind of threw it out there like it was a silly, frivolous thing to pray for. In the scale of big happenings and tragedies, a lost dog doesn’t really rank that high. But in light of the way all the events of the day unfolded, I realized that I’m doubting God’s authority and power over every area of life. I have Him reserved to handle the really big things, but don’t give Him a lot of the day to day things.

And look what He did today. He used a non-lost dog to save a lost man.

Now, that’s creative.

That’s His power.

“And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus” Phillippians 4:19

I don’t know if any of y’all have ever noticed, but on my sidebar I have a little box that has a new Bible verse posted in it everyday. This isn’t something I have the technical capabilities of creating, but rather a cool little thing that I found on the INTERNET, because if you look, you can find some really good stuff on the computer, which makes me hope this internet thing really takes off.

Anyway, I always take the time to read the verse of the day each morning when I check my blog to see if I’ve posted anything, because honestly, sometimes I can’t quite remember if I did or not, due to the fact that I usually write late at night in a tired, sleepy haze. Last week, I began to notice that EVERY day the verse was about asking anything of God and receiving it. On Saturday morning, when there was yet another verse about asking God and having faith, I turned around and laughingly told P, “I think God is telling me to ask Him for something”.

And he agreed that my superb powers of intuition were probably right. It only took me a week to catch on. God was probably sitting in heaven thinking He should have made me a little quicker on my feet.

I immediately thought of all the potential things I could ask of God. We are in a new season of life with the job change, potential ministry opportunities, my ongoing internal debate on whether or not I want another child and if it’s part of God’s plan for us to have another child, for financial provision and wisdom, for health, for peace, for happiness and contentment. Essentially, a veritable laundry list of potential requests.

So, I thought about all those things and how cool it was that God was speaking to me through all these Bible verses, and that was the end of it.

Then, yesterday morning, I checked the verse of the day. It was Mark 11:24, “Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours”. It was the 7th straight day that was about asking God for something in prayer. I can honestly say I didn’t even know there were so many verses about asking for things.

I needed to go to the grocery store so I loaded Caroline into the car and as I was driving into the HEB parking lot, I had a spiritual epiphany (I’m a mama, I take my epiphanies where I can get them). I realized the reason God keeps tugging at my heart and giving me sign after sign to ask Him for something, is because I have quit asking Him for things. And not due to some holy, saintly belief that I have all I need.

I’ll ask him to bless my family, to protect Caroline, to give us wisdom as we raise her, but I’ve quit asking for anything tangible because I am scared it won’t happen and I don’t want to be disappointed in God. And even as I type that, I am embarrassed by my lack of faith, especially in light of how faithful God has always been to provide for all my needs and exceed my expectations in so many ways.

I’m not sure when this happened, but I think it was somewhere during the time after Caroline was born. I prayed so hard that I would be able to stay home with her, and when my maternity leave ended and no one had delivered a large bag of money and health insurance to our door, I was disappointed. I accepted it and in all reality, became fine with it, but there was a part of me that just didn’t understand why it didn’t work out the way I had hoped. So, I tucked away all my hopes and dreams in a little corner and kept them to myself. Honestly, I don’t think I ever admitted, even to myself, how frustrated I felt. Plus, there was a huge part of me that recognized all the blessings I have in my life and that I don’t deserve any of them, so why would I complain about what I don’t have?

I quit asking God for the things that are most important to me. I have been letting fear control me. Fear of letting go, fear of surrendering, fear of disappointment, fear of things not working out the way I want them to, fear of where He may lead.

And now, He’s telling me I have to let go and just ASK. Yes, sometimes the answer may not be the answer I want and sometimes there will be answers I don’t understand, but ultimately I have to trust in Ephesians 3:20, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us”. I have watched, over the last year, as He has done more than I could ask or imagine. In spite of my unwillingness to ask Him for the desires of my heart, He has searched the corners of my heart and answered so many hidden requests.

He knows me, in spite of myself, and now I have to let myself know Him.

“Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.” John 16:24

Go read this. When I used to lead a high school girls’ Bible study, I used to always tell them that you never know who is watching to see if your actions line up with your words. Apparently, I was right.

I pray that my actions speak loudly for who and what I believe. But honestly, I think I fall short a lot of the time.

I just got home from my friend A.J.’s house. Her mom passed away Sunday evening around 6:30 p.m after a 6 month battle with pancreatic cancer. A.J. had called me earlier in the day to let me know that it wasn’t going to be much longer, but even when the phone call came, I still felt surprised. It’s just hard to imagine that someone who was so full of life is gone. Last week while I was in the midst of all my life changes, I spent an evening helping A.J. write her mom’s eulogy. Needless to say, it put things in their proper perspective.

This evening their home was filled with friends, family, laughter and tears. It was the kind of gathering that always seemed to happen at their house, but tonight her mom wasn’t there in the center of it all, yet she was the center of it all. I know there is relief that she is no longer in pain, but there is pain in feeling that she’s gone much too early.

A few months ago, I sent her a letter thanking her for how much she encouraged me as a new mother and told her that I hoped to raise Caroline to have the same qualities that she instilled in A.J. She emailed me back (apologizing for the rudeness of email opposed to the written letter, of course) and told me that I was too generous in my compliments and she had definitely made mistakes along the way.

All I know is that tonight, her home was filled with people who think she got it just right. She lived life to the fullest, she always made time for the people she loved, she followed God faithfully, and she fought until the end. And although we know where she is, she’ll be terribly missed.

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day…” 2 Timothy 4:7-8