The musings of an old woman,a wife, a mother of two sons, a lover of dogs and all God's creatures, a reader of books, a child of the King.
A pilgrim with many rivers yet to cross, on a journey home to Him.
This Saturday, the 16th of September I took my
dear friend Quasimodo, AKA QuasiBoBo, AKA the Joy and Peace Dog, to his new
family. It was a bittersweet experience. This dear dog, whom I have poured
heart and soul into, whom I have wept and prayed a thousand prayers and tears,
this dear dog who has brought me such laughter and joy, even in the middle of
tears and frustration was finally spreading his wings and flying away.
The night before his
big event we celebrated. He danced in the yard with his favorite flower pot, he
chased balls and ropes and then we came inside and he had ice cream. The look
on his face is always so delightful when he has ice cream.
Many of my friends
who have followed the saga of Quasimodo on my Facebook page or here on my blog
have urged me to keep him. I wanted to. I really did, but always when I
considered it there was that still small voice telling me that he was not made
for me. He has a different purpose. He is simply with me, to teach me some
lessons and to heal up and be prepared for where he is supposed to be. So in
truth I have always know this day was coming.
Once Quasi was
cleared for adoption the process began of introducing him to folks interested
in adopting him. We had several that seemed perfect for him. People with tons
of land and horses, which I thought would be wonderful for him. Yet for
whatever reason they did not work out. I was a little sad about this, but I
should not have been. Things went as they went because although those homes
were perfect for any dog, they did not fulfil the purpose of Quasimodo.
Quasi adores
children. He always made me laugh with his intense desire to be with children.
Mine are grown but a corner neighbor has kids and they often played in the
swimming pool. An eight foot brick wall separates us, and you cannot see in,
but you can hear the children laughing. Each time this occurred Quasi would run
to the corner and stand there, hopping into the air on all fours and trying desperately
to see the children.
Well his new family
do CYFD foster care. They provide a safe and loving place for children who are
abused and neglected. A safe place for broken children. How beautiful that is
and how wonderful that Quasimodo will be participating in something he delights
in, making children laugh and not only that but making children who may not
have much reason to laugh, laugh.
He has only been with
his new family a few days and already he has befriended a child in the CYFD
program. I am told that child “delights” in Quasi.
To all of you who
came along side me as I fostered this very special dog and nursed him through
his recover, to the ones who prayed, to the ones who laughed and loved…..thank
you. Thank you for participating in this glorious unfolding as we laughed and
cried and prayed and watched this big, goofy looking dog struggle to break free
of the limitations placed upon him by circumstances beyond his control. Through
it all he was a trooper. He danced wearing multiple cones, with drainage tubes
and bandages, he ran and frolicked wearing a plastic helmet, and he displayed
joy and hope throughout it all.
He would look at me
perplexed as I sat on the ground weeping, trying to figure out why I was so
sad, after all the mud and dirt is fun! “Look ma!, I am covered in mud! It is
so much fun!” and never understanding that my tears were for the probable dirt
that had now contaminated his head.
Here’s to you
Quasimodo, the Joy and Peace dog! Every second was worth it and what a glorious
unfolding is has been! But it’s not over yet, in fact it has just begun. And it’s
going to be wonderful watching from a distance as your forever Auntie Donna, as
you fulfil your purpose.
I sit and watch the big Rottweiler as he
leaps and twirls about the backyard in his dance of joy and I reflect on the
experience of the last couple of months caring for him through his recovery,
and of things I have been reading and of a song I just listened to on the
radio.
This joyful dog was born somewhere down
south in New Mexico, a little over a year ago, and at the young age of 9 weeks
he was attacked by another dog and severely injured, suffering damage to his
head, crushing of one nasal cavity and giving him a misshapen face where his
eyes don’t quite line up, and his jaw is off-center. We found out recently
through a search of his medical records that he was bitten by a snake a little
while after his first injury. This too in the face.
So the dog grew up and as he grew his body
overcompensated and created a huge bony growth on the left side of his head, a
growth with bony fingers pressing down into his left eye and a growth that
filled up with nasty infection and created a constant pressure, probably must
like a severe sinus infection to us.
Much of that story was told in a previous
blog post. But today my thoughts are drawn to how things unfold in life, and
how although bad times can seem unsurmountable and more than we can endure, the
story is not over yet.
The dog zooms about the yard, leaping like
some kind of heavy weight sumo wrestler trying to do ballet. He is both
graceful and clumsy. He is exuberant! He feels so darn good and life, in his
opinion, just doesn’t get any better. But it wasn’t always so for him. There
was a time when all he knew was the dull ache and pressure in his head, an ache
that dulled life for him, prevented a good fast frolic from being enjoyable,
and I cannot but marvel at the glorious unfolding that I have been able to
witness as I have watched this dog go from the misshapen Quasimodo, to the
exuberant and joyful QuasiBoBo.
As I
watch him frolic in the yard, I ponder the story that I read recently in the
book of Ruth, a Bible book I have read frequently over the years and yet this
time something else jumped out at me in the story. Naomi, the mother in law of
Ruth, a woman who left the land of her birth and followed her husband into
Moab. She bore him two fine sons, and watched them marry Moabite women and
somewhere along the way everything went wrong. Her husband died, leaving her
alone, and then both her sons died, leaving her bereft and broken.
Naomi must have had some wonderful character
traits, because both of her daughter in laws wept at the thought of losing her,
as she informed them of her intention to return to the land of her birth. So
much so that Ruth decides to follow her and declares those famous lines;
“entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee, whether
thou goest I will go, thy people will be my people and thy God my God.” There
must be something that shined out of Naomi’s life to have created such a bond
that the daughter in law is now willing to follow her into a land where
Moabites are not too popular, and to do so as a young widow.
I think of Naomi. Of how totally lost and
broken she must have been. Dead husband. Dead sons. Nobody to provide for her
and probably not much to live for. She tells her people to stop calling her
Naomi and to call her Mara “for the Lord has dealt bitterly with me”. I can’t
say I blame her for that, she for sure endured a terrible loss, and carried a
heavy burden.
Yet I imagine this woman as she took her final
breath and then stepped into the presence of the God that she had always
believed in, when she at last could see how everything turned out in her story,
when she could behold from beginning to end the glorious unfolding of the most
wonderful story ever told, and one that she had played a part in. The look on
her face as she realized that from the line of her daughter in law Ruth, and her
kinsman redeemer Boaz, had come the Savior of the world! When she realized that
the hard life she had lived, and the witness she had made to her young daughter
in law, the witness that drew that young woman to follow her home, and thus
meet Boaz and marry him, and have a child, who had a child, who had a child and
one day, in a stable in Bethlehem a babe was born to a young virgin……..what a
glorious unfolding of grace that came straight out of the broken, heartrending
trials of a woman named Naomi.
And as I rise to get ready to leave for work
my thoughts drift to my father, a man who suffered a lot of hardship and
disappointment in life and I imagine his face, as he took that final breath and
stepped into eternity, and as the Savior whom he had served most of his life
unfolded the glorious story of all the lives impacted by his faithfulness. And
I pause for a moment and look up, and imagine hearing my dad, from that great
cloud of witnesses whisper “run, daughter”……”run your race…..the story is far
from over….and what a glorious unfolding it will be!”.
Glorious Unfolding by Steven Curtis Chapman
Lay your
head down tonight
Take a rest from the fight
Don’t try to figure it out
Just listen to what I’m whispering to your heart
‘Cause I know this is not
Anything like you thought
The story of your life was gonna be
And it feels like the end has started closing in on you
But it’s just not true
There’s so much of the story that’s still yet to unfold
And this is
going to be a glorious unfolding
Just you wait and see and you will be amazed
You’ve just got to believe the story is so far from over
So hold on to every promise God has made to us
And watch this glorious unfolding
God’s plan
from the start
For this world and your heart
Has been to show His glory and His grace
Forever revealing the depth and the beauty of
His unfailing love
And the story has only begun
And this is
going to be a glorious unfolding
Just you wait and see and you will be amazed
We’ve just got to believe the story is so far from over
So hold on to every promise god has made to us
And watch this glorious unfolding
We were made
to run through fields of forever
singing songs to our Savior and King
So let us remember this life we’re living
Is just the beginning of the beginning
Of this
glorious unfolding
We will watch and see and we will be amazed
If we just keep on believing the story is so far from over
And hold on to every promise god has made to us
We’ll see the glorious unfolding
Just watch
and see (unfolding)
This is just the beginning of the beginning (unfolding)
A couple of months ago I met a Rottweiler named Quasimodo. A rather
quiet and gentle soul. Quasi was attacked by another dog when he was just a few
weeks old, and his nasal cavity was crushed. As he grew and matured his body
compensated for the injury and grew an enormous mass of bone on the left side
of his head. So Quasi, now one year old, has this huge domed hump on the top of
his head, a mass so large that is caused his left eye to be squeezed shut and
thus giving him his name.
Quasi has known no
other life, all his days have been spent with the burden and the pressure of
his injury. This is his life, this is as good as it gets for Quasi. Sure, he
has had some good times, some tasty bones, naps in the sun and interactions
with others, but all took place with the burden and the pressure of the old
injury, squeezing shut his eye and causing pain, sort of like having a
permanent sinus infection.
I immediately fell in
love with this dog, with his grossly misshapen head and his quiet and kind
brown eye. You could just feel the “very special” radiating off this dog. On
that first day that we met, I was only able to spend a few minutes with him, on
a quick walk around the park, but he captivated me from the moment I first saw
him.
The next week Quasi
went in for surgery, to remove all that extra skull from his dome. When they
cut into him they found this hardened bony dome was filled with nasty pus and
gore. The vet was brilliant in her work and worked diligently to remove all the
infection and once the surgery was over, Quasi’s head was more normal shaped.
He arrived back to
the rescue that evening, and the dog that had been quiet and gentle was now
dancing. He danced and he lept and he was so darn happy. Although he had a huge
cone on his head, and gauze packed into his surgery wound, with a drain hanging
out the top of his head, and he looked a frightful hot mess, but he didn’t
care. All Quasi knew was that the burden, and the pressure were gone! And he
felt wonderful! He felt alive! And he wanted nothing more than to dance and to
run and to leap, not caring at all that he was slinging blood and gore all
about him, plastering it upon the walls and the people. For the first time
since his injury, Quasimodo was dancing!
Sadly I did not get
to see this wonderful sight, but I had it described to me, and it filled my
heart with joy for this beautiful very special dog!
A few weeks later I
got to spend some time with Quasi. What a different dog from when we first met.
His head was filled with stitches and somewhat misshapen, and he had a bit of a
Frankenstein appearance now, he was wearing his huge cone, but he had such joy
in his eyes. He was a new dog. The same and yet not the same. He was alive, he
was joyful, and looking at him all I could see was beautiful hope and redemption.
Quasimodo reminds me
of myself. Of how I lived my life, up until my high twenties, with a burden and
a pressure upon it that I could not describe, nor understand, nor get rid of.
There were good times, and great experiences, but all were somewhat marred by
that pressure and yearning that spoke to my soul saying “surely this is not
everything?” “Surely there is something more?”
And somewhere into all
that mess that was me, and my life, God reached down and called my name, and
something inside me awoke, and something I had always carried, not even
realizing the full weight of it, fell away, and I was free and I was changed.
Jesus, the one who touched lepers, had touched me and I would never again be
the same. All that stuff mucking up my life, all that weight pressing down upon
me, all that yearning for “something more”, was gone and I was new and
different.
I know how Quasimodo
must feel, I know why he dances, he has been given a new life, totally and
completely different from the life he once had. He didn’t even know that such a
thing was possible. All of his days of memory had been filled with that
pressure, that big ugly puss filled burden on the top of his head. It had
marred everything. Even the good moments of life, the tasty bones, the time
spent with the people he loved, all of that marred by that steady pressure of
pain, that steady burden of infection. He is a new dog now.
I have since been blessed to be able to foster Quasimodo for a bit and currently he is entertaining us with his antics and teaching me the lessons I need to learn from him, before he moves on into his special forever home.
He has already shown me how there is always hope, even when you can't feel it, can't see it, can't even contemplate the possibility of it. He has found a new life, a second chance, and its like nothing he could ever dream. He will get to be all that he was created to be, he will dance, he will frolic and he will bring love and companionship to his special human. Quasi has joy now, an unbridled joy, he feels good, he feels so good that he can hardly contain himself.
He has already shown me the art of dancing, even if you have ugly stitches and a huge cone on your head. And just watching him, seeing the joy in his face reminds me of redemption. Something that I too rejoice in and am greatly thankful for.
Quasi has been redeemed. His redemption was bought for him by someone else, an act of total grace and one for which he cannot repay. And he is overjoyed by this new wonderful life he has been given. There is so much more to come for him, but right now its a lot of times in crates, and wearing a giant cone on his head but still he dances. He is the very picture of joy personified. It's as if he can now see the hope in front of him.
He is a hoot to watch, and already I see that God has much to teach me through the antics of this very special dog.
God bless you Quasimodo, and grant you long life, peace, people who adore you, tasty bones, naps in the sun, long walks by the river and all the other good things that every dog should have. Until then…………teach me His ways and His lessons as I watch you heal up.
You're shattered Like you've never been before The life you knew In a thousand pieces on the floor And words fall short in times like these When this world drives you to your knees You think you're never gonna get back To the you that used to be
Tell your heart to beat again Close your eyes and breathe it in Let the shadows fall away Step into the light of grace Yesterday's a closing door You don't live there anymore Say goodbye to where you've been And tell your heart to beat again
Beginning Just let that word wash over you It's alright now Love's healing hands have pulled you through So get back up, take step one Leave the darkness, feel the sun 'Cause your story's far from over And your journey's just begun
Tell your heart to beat again Close your eyes and breathe it in Let the shadows fall away Step into the light of grace Yesterday's a closing door You don't live there anymore Say goodbye to where you've been And tell your heart to beat again
Let every heartbreak And every scar Be a picture that reminds you Who has carried you this far 'Cause love sees farther than you ever could In this moment heaven's working Everything for your good
Tell your heart to beat again Close your eyes and breathe it in Let the shadows fall away Step into the light of grace Yesterday's a closing door You don't live there anymore Say goodbye to where you've been And tell your heart to beat again Your heart to beat again Beat again