Lent 2022, Day 36

 


Today’s BiOY NT passage is Luke 11, in which Jesus famously says,

¹⁰ “For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

 This is another of those aspirational, sometimes even problematic passages. Because sometimes (often? usually?) the asker does not receive, at least not literally. I imagine that many of the murdered people in Ukraine cried out to God—or the West, or anyone—to save them, and look what happened. In a figurative or spiritual sense, I would argue that people who diligently seek God will find him (and the context of this passage is primarily about spiritual seeking), but speaking of spiritual rescue in the moment of physical peril or even simply need, is not necessarily helpful. It’s a mystery to ponder in times of safety, perhaps, to have one’s mindset pre-determined in preparation for unsafe times.

 Libby and I had a really, really hard day yesterday. We had a session with a new trainer, and it did not go well. No one got hurt, but I had the opportunity to see my beloved Libby go full police-dog on someone, saw her get between me and this trainer, saw her go insane with angry fear, even saw her try to bite at me. It was intense and horrifying, and for the first time in months, I found myself considering whether Libby can live safely. Whether she can live. After all of the love and promises and hard work, maybe the ongoing prayer to save her won’t be answered. At least not the way I’d like it to be answered. Of course it’s true that she was saved already and has had a couple of good years where she has been loved so hard. That all is true. But maybe love will not be enough in the end … The simple and practical truth is that, for all my lighthearted words about “bitey-ness,” Libby cannot be allowed to bite a person. Ever.

 So we lost some major ground. But we gained some too: I realized that it’s absolutely necessary for me to be fully in charge and not just a nurturer or playmate. So we’re making some changes that no one likes, but this is serious and urgent. And I am continuing to ask for Libby’s life and freedom and joy and innocence to be saved and restored to her. And to me.

#lent2022 #rescuedogsofinstagram #bibleinoneyear #repentandbelieve

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Concert Mom

The stage lit up in a way I found overwhelming.  The crowd cheered and I listened to the music and was moved but didn’t know why.  Kids sang along, angrily, ecstatically, and I stood in their midst, tears streaming down my middle-aged face.  I found myself once again in the sacred role of witness and testifier. Four years prior, the first concert not-of-my-choosing that I chose to attend with my daughter was some metal band. I don’t remember who but I remember the night vividly.  It was a classic-to-the-point-of-cliché mother-daughter battle:  she was 14 and NEEDED to see this band, would simply die if she did not.  Her Catholic-school friends were supremely uninterested in seeing this band, so her reasonable, modest proposal was that she, at 14, attend a gritty concert in a gritty part of San Francisco, solo.  I was not 14, and I would simply die if she went alone (I might actually have used the words “over my dead body”).  Impasse. We were in the midst of therapy that is a luxuri
Read more

Lent 2022, Spy Wednesday

Image
Having grown up in a non-litur gical tradition, the various movements of Holy Week are pretty new to me. It makes me sad that I’ve missed out on such depth and rich history. And cool names! Spy Wednesday ... wow. Of course, the “spy” of “Spy Wednesday” is no laughing matter: none other than that great villain of Scripture, Judas Iscariot. The one who betrayed his friend with a kiss. That guy. My friend  @d.a.v.i.d.n.y.c  once taught a class on Judas Iscariot. It was fascinating to learn that the Gospels that were written closer to the actual historical events reported the story of Jesus’ betrayal very matter-of-factly. Only in the later Gospels does Judas start to become the caricature we know and hate. In Mark (written c. AD 66-70) the story of the betrayal is presented in a “just the facts, ma’am” manner. In Matthew (written c. AD 85-90) we get the facts of the story, along with the heart-wrenching moment when Jesus calls Judas his friend, even as he’s being betrayed. In Luke (and it
Read more

Lent 2022, Day 29

Image
  From Nicky Gumbel’s commentary on today’s reading from Luke 8: “I have never met a strong person with an easy past. Faith is tested.” Although I imagine this is not universally true, I think it is mostly true of most people. Stress, hardship, testing, tend to strengthen us. It’s in nature and it’s in human nature. When my kids were small, I used to say that I wished for strength and toughness for them through developed muscles, not from scarring—or as my friend Linda Douglas put it, “we’d prefer that they learn some lessons from the textbook and not the field trip.”   But sometimes the field trips of life are where we learn our most important lessons, where we grow the most. To protect ourselves and our children completely from those field trips, were it even possible, would be for them to miss out on much of what it is to be human. Sadness, loss, pain, illness, unfair treatment … all of these things happen in this broken world, and while we don’t wish for them, don’t welcome t
Read more