Thursday, December 31, 2009

Trusting is hard

So, I took some days off from this writing gig. Christmas and all.

Then all heck broke loose. My best male friend, Frankie by dog, came up sick. Turns out he is a chronic cat poop eater, which though that isn't good for him either, isn't the bad thing. When he got into the cat litter boxes, he came away with more than poop. He came away with the litter. And over time it became like "mortar" according to the vet.

He threw up over night, and he had been losing weight, so all this combined to put him at the vet's getting operated on.

He's doing okay as of this writing, but I'm not. I've not slept. I've been over anxious. I've been scared. I don't remember eating, but I'm sure I did. I thought for sure we had lost my little buddy.

He's such a charmer, by the way. He loves kids, well, everyone. He is a licker, a yipper and a smiler. He sleeps with us at night and loves his naps during the day. He gets ridiculously happy when the door to the back yard is opened and he is allowed to bounce on out. He doesn't like any of the other dogs having arguments, and he is absolutely sure he is a doberman.

He's not. He's a little, long, brittle dog who adopted us the summer before Katrina (which is how all New Orleanians measure time now).

I thought I had lost him, and I was terribly hurt and worried.

Then, I promise I'm not making this up, I turned to the Lord. I didn't pray that Frankie be healed so much as I prayed for God to honor the vet's schooling and intelligence and craft. I prayed that God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven. I prayed that I show the grandboys courage under adversity, though I cried once and they had a hard time understanding that I wasn't faking since I had fake cried so much in the past week to coerce them into doing things.

I prayed that I be given trust.

That seems backwards, but sometimes, I think, that's all we have. It's like the guy who said (I paraphrase, of course) "Lord, I believe, help me with my belief." Sometimes to trust, we have to pray for trust. Sometimes for faith, we have to pray for faith. Sometimes we just have to hang on to the cliff by our fingernails. God honors that, I think. God recognizes sometimes the fears we have because for a couple of minutes in a garden outside of Jerusalem Jesus might have felt a bit of that emotion, asking that the cup of pain and death be taken away. But Jesus then said, "but not my will but yours be done."

Even in the case of Frankie's life, and it is still not settled because there were a number of incisions made and he is in recovery, I trust God. I really do. Granted I have few options, but still, I understand that God wants whatever is best for me. He really does.

Scripture tells us this: Does the God who lavishly provides you with his own presence, his Holy Spirit, working things in your lives you could never do for yourselves, does he do these things because of your strenuous moral striving or because you trust him to do them in you.

I'll give you a hint. It's about the trust we have, not how good we are. I trust Him. I love Him. And if He will just send Frankie home, it will be a wonderful new year. In fact, it will be a wonderful new year whatever God does for us. That's who He is, and whose we are.

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