“Is One of Us Supposed to be a Dog in This Scenario?” God taught me a lesson through my dogs.

Sally Albright and Harry Burns in the movie, When Harry Met Sally

~ Sally (Meg Ryan), in When Harry Met Sally

My dogs are a nuisance...and a blessing. Right now, they are all three barking at my neighbors, which stirs feelings of frustration and guilt in me. I don’t want to be a rude neighbor who allows my dogs to terrorize people, but I have tried and tried to control them with very little effect. They are dogs, and they do what dogs do. They encourage one another in their dog-ness, so that if one starts to bark, the others feel they have to get in on it.

Dogs can be scary. They sometimes fight ferociously with one another and bite and injure and draw blood. In our panic during these moments, my son and I have attempted to intervene, and we both have bite scars to prove it. My friend tells of a woman he worked with who came into work one day with four fingers on one hand. She had tried to break up her dogs when they were fighting, and they bit off her finger and swallowed it!

Dogs are expensive. I try not to think of all the money I’ve spent on their food, vet care, and licensing. I remember with disgust how they chewed up and peed on an entire living room of new furniture. I had to pay fines when they tunneled into my neighbor’s yard, and she called the city to pick them up. And I have spent days of my life and a good amount of cash repairing fences and gates that they have eaten through in their fever to get free of the confines of our yard.

Dogs are messy. I have to clean up their poop, and my wife tries to stay on top of all the carpet stains they make. They destroy what I have so laboriously landscaped in my backyard, and I seem to always be working on “dog-proofing” it (as if that were possible). I have to make sure that they are fenced in, because they long to roam free, even though it could mean starvation or death or even just a much less loving life for them. They don’t know any better.

But I love them. When I was on a recent trip to New York, every dog reminded me of them and made my heart ache to be back with them. Now that I’m home, I am enjoying quiet moments where they come and nuzzle against me and lick my hands and face. They crave time with me, and that brings me joy.

From God’s perspective, I share a lot of the qualities of my dogs. I am messy and destructive. He is always having to fix what I’ve broken and teach me to be loving toward my neighbors. He has created a beautiful world for me to live in, and I’m am constantly looking past the kind and loving and amazing things He has done for me to chase after my own interests. I require a lot of care and feeding, and I’m sure that I am quite “expensive” to His plans and His Kingdom. Yet, He loves me - cherishes me - dotes on me.

He loves it when I remember Him for even a moment and come to spend time at His feet. His heart aches for me when I am distant, and He can’t wait for me to come back to Him. I am a frustrating nuisance - I am a beloved child.

In His grace and mercy, God taught me a lesson through my dogs. He did not confront me directly about my selfish disregard for His presence and beautiful creation. He allowed me to see my “dog-iness” for myself, reflected back to me by my own pets. It’s a gentle nudge that both makes me want to love my dogs more generously and be more aware of how much God has done, is doing for me. I am realizing that in addition to my dogs’ love for me, what I bought with all that money and time and occasional frustration was perspective.