Drives to the Vet

I've been feeling a lot of stress lately over things that aren't really necessary and shouldn't be at the forefront of my mind. Still, they cause me extreme grief at times, and I find myself feeling completely confused and unable to deal with the issue at hand. I'm sure this is common to everyone, and there have been a lot of days that I have crawled into bed leaving my textbooks and responsibilities with school lying on the floor. It's easy for us to put down the things that are critical to moving forward and dwell on the things that hold us back. It's hard to understand why things happen, and definitely difficult to make future decisions when our minds are bogged down by everything that we can't control.

Gracie doesn't like when I take her to the vet. I don't think there is a pet alive that is excited about their trip to the vet devil. For her, she mainly hates the drive. She looks around anxiously at all the things she's never seen before, and my dad's driving usually causes her to nearly fall into the floorboard at every stop. After the stress of the car ride and the shots at the vet, Gracie will typically curl up next to me and just endure it.

Often times, we feel like we are just looking around desperately for an explanation. We want to understand why things are the way they are and how we can make the right choices. I know I am, and I'm sure Gracie was as she sat back with her ears folded looking like she was scared out of her mind by the roaring truck passing our car on the highway. Instead of focusing on our fears, we should focus on the the positives. The unknown is definitely frightening, but just like the shots that Gracie gets which will benefit her in the future, God has a plan ready for us. Everything that we go through makes us stronger, and I am currently seeing that in my life right now. I no longer cry over the things that I used to, and when I do cry, I let it all out and I walk away from it the next day. We grow stronger everyday when we endure through our struggles and believe in the faithfulness of God and His promises.

Give God your faith and truly believe in His plan. His voice will sound much clearer and your prayers will echo in your own heart.

Racing Against God

Last night, I was trying to catch Gracie who had managed to climb the stairs and get into my bedroom. When I found her, she gave me a look that immediately let me know that she was up to something. I reached for her, and she quickly flipped around and started running circles around my room. I chased her and it didn't matter how close I got to her, she would somehow manage to squeeze away. However, I kept after her until finally she grew weary of the chase and I snatched her up.

Sometimes we don't do it intentionally, but it's easy for us to find ourselves running away from God. We find every possible way to escape His gaze and His hold over us. This can happen through the choices we make, even when we know they aren't right for us. Maybe we've been too surrounded by noise to be silent and listen to God's voice. There are plenty of reasons for why we may be running a foot race with God: fear, bitterness, anger, depression, pride...the list goes on and on.

Eventually though, running becomes tiring. It may have taken me several minutes chasing Gracie before I finally caught up to her, after she was tired of running. We can't run from God for forever. At some point, whether it's because we've hit rock bottom, or we're just plain exhausted, God gets a hold of us. Once I had caught Gracie, she settled into my arms with her heart racing, but was motionless as if she'd accepted her place. God is home for us, and once we've felt His love again, we are swept up in it and we never want to escape again. 

It's easy to lose sight of our faith, but we have the comfort in knowing that God is always right behind us. No matter how hard we may fight, God is right there to pick us back up once we hit a wall. It can be scary at first, but there is nothing better than accepting God's love. It's better than any possible reason that tempts us to run. So quit running, just take a breather and let God do all the work.

Waking Each Morning

Gracie always seems to be full of energy. As soon as she's awake, she's ready to take on the world by bouncing, running, and biting just about anything that crosses her path--including me. Sometimes she's completely obnoxious and I feel like I'm fighting off a wild animal. Other times she makes me laugh and I'm able to temporarily forget about whatever problems I have swirling around in my mind, which is a constant problem with me. I'll let you in on a secret of mine. My biggest flaw is that I am an over thinker. I know I'm not alone in the world when it comes to this, but sometimes I truly feel that way. It can be extremely debilitating to have your mind constantly racing with thoughts that only bring negativity into your life. I can name tons of incidents where I caused problems in my life because I had self-created them by thinking too much over it. It is truly my biggest sin. I am a worrier, to the extreme.

Now back to Gracie. Gracie doesn't have much to worry about other than the fact that she doesn't know how to walk down stairs yet. When I let her outside, she is perfectly fine with running around and chasing leaves. I smile as I watch her roll around, capturing leaves in her mouth and carrying them around the yard like trophies. The reason I find myself smiling is not because she's silly, but because she's honestly experiencing life the way I should be, with joy.

God did not give us life so that we would suffer. Jesus Christ suffered for us so that we could one day be with God in heaven. That should make us happy enough that nothing in this entire world can bring us down. It's really easy to say that, believe me, I know. I am going through my own struggle right now, and letting go of it and just accepting happiness is one of the hardest struggles I have ever gone through. However, despite that, I feel like I'm in the right place for God to do work within me.

Every morning when we wake up, we should first thank God for it, no matter what we know we may have to face. Often times, I find myself dreading things in my life, knowing I'll have to continue to face my issue each day. This isn't the way God meant for us to live, otherwise what would have been the point? Life is a part of God's creation, and it is a blessing for us to experience it. Every morning, we are able to walk outside and look up into the sky. Have you ever considered just how incredible the world is around you? Nature literally lives along with you. It breathes alongside you, it is the literal representation of God.

Like Gracie, who can run around and deeply enjoy the divine spirit all around her, we should do the same. I don't mean you need to snatch leaves up in your mouth and prance around like a baby dear, but you can simply take it all in. Just breathe and let the world breathe with you.

God is all around us all of the time. We should take on each day with the same kind of spirit as Gracie. No matter how upset she gets about going down stairs, she still gives me that look and runs about excitedly. We can't let our temporary problems bring us down, because Christ never gave up. We shouldn't either.

She Cried Right Beside Me

The other day, I received some really hard words to swallow. I can't explain the amount of pain I felt as I walked into my house and sank to the kitchen floor and cried bitterly. At the time, I didn't hear my yellow lab, Gracie, running to meet me. I was too hurt to hear her as she cried beside me, trying to get me to accept her. Often times, that's how we are with God. We become so blinded by our hurt, fear, anger, and arrogance to hear the cries of God. God always hears and answers our cries, but rarely do we do the same.

For a long time now, I have felt the heavy weight of God on my heart. I had my life focused on all the wrong things, and I think back on it now and understand why things have gone the way they have. All things happen for a reason, and that is because God is always trying to pull us back to Him. I strayed from Him, allowing myself to love people more than I loved God. When my heart was broken and I had failed myself, I found myself looking face to face with God, and He was telling me, "I will never fail you, even when those you love do." That's the truth that I had been running from, and now I laugh because I was ridiculous for ever trying to. The things that seem so important to us in this life are nothing compared to the God who is always beside us.

The day that I fell to my knees and cried on the kitchen floor, Gracie was trying to tell me the same thing. She clawed at my arm and cried desperately, wanting me to know she was there. She would never fail me, even when the people I was living my life for did. God never abandons us, even when we ignore Him. He persistently calls to us until we are ready to answer. I have realized that my weaknesses only make me strong. Christ died weak and broken on the cross, but through God's strength we were saved. The pains I have felt throughout my life are not something for me to feel sorry about. They have made me strong and will only continue to make me strong. We should boast in our weakness, just as it is stated in 2 Corinthians. We are strong in God. We will make it, we just have to listen to the words of God and accept him, just like I finally did for Gracie when I picked myself up off the floor and held her close to me.

Don't settle in your weakness. Pick yourself up, because that weakness will bring you strength through God. Listen and accept God, because He is always calling out to you to give your life to Him.

Dirty Puppies and a Dirty Heart

I have a nine week old blonde Labrador Retriever. Her name is Ally Grace, but I call her Gracie. We found each other at my aunt's trailer in the middle of the rolling country hills of Alabama. Everything smelled like chickens and my aunt had adopted a duck, for reasons I couldn't begin to explain. I walked over to the dirty box that her new puppies were in, and all of the sudden, this blonde fluffy head popped up out of the dusty darkness. Her nose was pink and brown, and coated in mud. I felt my heart catch when her big brown eyes met mine. I immediately gave up on the brown lab that I had thought I just had to have, and I picked up my new best friend and held her dirty chubby body against my blue shirt. She snorted like a pig, and I knew I had to have her.

Gracie is a handful, just like my life. She cries a lot at night still, and she's going through the phase where she has to literally chew my arm off every time I sit down with her. I look at her sometimes and think about how alike we are. I'm a cry baby and I love to feel like I'm wanted. I need to be played with every once in a while, and sometimes I'm just plain obnoxious. All in all though, I'm just a girl who has a lot of heart and tons of spunk. 

I decided to name my blonde lab Ally Grace for a few reasons. First of all, I named her Ally after the greatest dog in the world. My Ally was a mix between a Golden Retriever and a Lab. She was beautiful and sweet, and it crushed me when we had to put her to sleep due to cancer. When I saw Gracie, I immediately saw Ally, and felt like my favorite angel was back. I named her Grace because I felt in my heart like my new puppy was a gift from God. When I walked up to see my aunt's puppies, I was walking up feeling completely broken. My heart was hurting more than I could explain and my eyes were red from trying not to cry in the car. Everything escaped from me when I saw that dirty puppy, and I felt God's breath on my ear as I reached down and picked her up.

God always has His way. Sometimes it doesn't seem clear at first, but His actions guide everything that we do and everything that happens to us. Even when I felt completely destroyed, God reached down and gave me a gift. Gracie will always love me, no matter how obnoxious I am, or how broken I may feel sometimes. Labs are a little like God's love, when you start to think about it. Just like my dirty puppy who I brought home and washed, God has begun washing away the filth of my heart. All the fears and the burdens that I have carried are now disappearing in the light of His Grace, and for that I will be glad.

Until next time, smile and be glad, because just like dirty puppies, God can wash our dirty hearts of the past.