You know it’s going to be a
tough week when your cat is radioactive and your dog blew a breaker by chewing
a computer wire. Yes, my friends, it has
been one of those weeks. And I’ll be
honest: I didn’t necessarily handle it
with grace, charm, or patience. I broke
down crying at least twice, threw a couple of really childish fits (fortunately
no one had the joy of seeing those), felt overwhelmed with doubt and regret,
and thought about throwing in the towel.
For me, change is very
hard. I like my life to be exactly as I have
arranged it. I’ve always been this
way. I’m not proud of it; I wish I was
more emotionally flexible, but I just find deep comfort in a predictable
environment. We have thoroughly
disrupted our humdrum (happy) household with an 8 month old dog. She is fantastic in every way…except she can’t
resist chasing our cats. That and,
because of my husband’s crazy night schedule at the railroad, our blissful
sleep is being interrupted with great regularity when Noel wants to go outside
or play or… chase our cats.
Speaking of our cats, my
oldest kitty is currently radioactive. I’m
not being metaphorical here, as English teachers are prone to be. Boy, my 16 year-old senior citizen tabby, is actually
Geiger counter-able. After discovering
that he was hyperthyroid, we put him on medicine that generated a horrible allergic
reaction called “excoriations.” In plain
English, he was scratching himself until his neck was bald and bleeding. After trying every alternative imaginable, we
decided to have his thyroid destroyed with radioactive iodine. The procedure took four days at a lovely cat
clinic in Spokane called The Cat’s Meow, and when his radioactivity lowered to
an acceptable level he was released back into our care. “Don’t let him sleep with you or sit on you
for three days,” said the veterinarian.
But Boy was quite shook up from his ordeal, and I confess that I just
didn’t have it in me to shut Boy out of the bedroom. Therefore, I invited sleep that was
interrupted with the regularity of Chinese water torture. Every hour I would wake up with a start to
find Boy staring into my face. It’s my
own fault, I know. I just didn’t have
the heart to isolate him. The good news
is that he is now safe to sleep with us, and I don’t wake up flailing for the
other side of the bed to get away from our “glowing” cat. But we do have to store two weeks of cat
litter for 90 days before we can dispose of it.
Otherwise various and sundry alarms will go off at the city dump and
they’ll have to call in hazmat to find the radioactive material.
Throw in a major car repair
and a very busy week into the mix, and it’s been a bit overwhelming around
here. While I wish I could say I just
rolled with the punches, I didn’t. While
I wish I could say that I kept a positive outlook, I didn’t. I wish I was more like my husband, who can
make anything funny. I wish I wasn’t so
internally rigid and such a perfectionist.
So what did I do about all of
this? I just grabbed a shovel and
started shoveling. Literally. I put on my winter shoes and jacket, grabbed
the shovel from the garage, and went to work on our icy, slushy, cruddy
driveway at 10:00 at night, when I really just wanted to go to bed. And with every shovel full of slush, I complained
and cried to God. Thank goodness we have
the Holy Spirit to translate our prayers, because they were surely a jumble of
words laced with emotion and certainly incoherent.
Now here’s the metaphor (you
knew it was coming…it is me you’re dealing with after all): Sometimes shoveling is all we can do. Just suck it up, pull on your gloves, and get
to work. Have faith that after a while your
work will pay off and the slush will be out of your way. It may take a while to clear a path. It may take effort to get it done, but at
some point the work will produce results.
Sometimes I wish that having faith meant just stepping back and letting
God step in and fix it. If only praying,
“Please stop Noel from chasing our cats!” would result in a great cosmic “zap”
from God that would instantly change this behavior in our new dog. Don’t get me wrong, God could certainly do just
that. But what I knew deep down is that
God needs me to be an active worker in my relationship with Noel and within my
own life. That’s why she and I are going
to dog obedience training starting today.
Noel has some things to learn, and I suspect God has some things for me
to learn as well. By getting to work in
my own life, I have faith that God will answer each one of my jumbled,
desperate prayers. Here’s to a straight
A report card for Noel as she learns how to be a good dog, and for me as I
learn how to be a good owner.
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