...ask the animals, and
they will teach you
Job 12:7
(Excerpt from Children of Dreams, Chapter 8)
My mind flashed back to when
I was young.
I was awakened by a big white
dog licking me in my face and jumping all over my bed. As I tried to open my
eyes from what I thought was a dream, my mother said, “This is Gypsy. We are
going to keep her.”
Gypsy was the friend I longed
for but didn’t have. When I came home from school, she would greet me at the
door with her tail wagging. I walked her, fed her, and played with her. After
we returned from each walk, I would announce how many times she had used the
bathroom, both number one and number two, as if to validate I was the best dog
walker in the world. I even cleaned up after her when she threw up so nobody
would know.
Gypsy was a stray. The night
before she jumped on me in bed she had snuck into the house with my dad. She
was God’s gift to me. We were inseparable.
One afternoon I arrived home
from school and knew something was wrong. She didn't greet me at the door like
she usually did and I ran through the house frantically looking for her.
“She's gone,” my mother and
father told me. “She won’t be back. The manager of the apartment came and took
her away.”
“Where did they take
her?” I cried.
“The manager said they would
dump her off on the road somewhere far from here. You know the apartment
complex doesn’t allow dogs.”
I ran out of the room and up
the stairs to my bedroom. My mind was flooded with memories of the most
important thing in my little world. My heart was broken, confused, and hurting.
Gypsy was gone.
That night bolts of thunder
crashed outside my bedroom. Lightning pierced through the window shades. I
imagined Gypsy in the darkness. I could feel her white warm fur against my skin
and see her dark, brown eyes pleading for me to come to get her. I cried into my
pillow as peels of thunder bounced off the walls. If Gypsy ever found her way
back, I vowed to run away with her. I would never let anybody take her from me
again.
But the next day came and
went and she didn’t return. I went to school each day hoping for the
impossible, that somehow she could find her way back from wherever they dumped
her.
It was Wednesday, the day
before Thanksgiving. We were packing things up to go visit my new father’s
family in North Carolina. My mother had recently remarried. I kept looking up
the hill in front of the apartment, imagining that she would come running down
the street any minute. I knew it would be impossible, but still, I hoped. I made
one last trip to my bedroom. The car was loaded and we were ready to leave. I
picked up my pillow and thought of the first morning she licked me on the face
in bed.
“Please, Gypsy, come back to
me. You need a home and someone to love you. I need you.”
I walked out the door of our
apartment to get into the car. I glanced one last time up the hill. Out of
nowhere, suddenly, there was something white. Was it, could it be—I dropped my
pillow and started running up the hill. I ran as fast as my legs would carry
me, my mind racing to think what seemed like the impossible. It couldn’t be—but
it was.
Gypsy ran frantically toward
me, tattered, dirty, and exhausted. Somehow she had miraculously found her way
home through the raging storm. After being lost for days in the cold November
nights, miles from our home, Gypsy had done the impossible. She had found her
way back to me.
“Gypsy!” I cried. I crouched
down to grab her as she jumped into my arms, holding her tightly around the
neck, crying and rejoicing all at the same time. My dog was lost, but now she
was found.
“I will never let go of you,”
I promised. She squealed with delight and licked my face. For the first time in
my young life, I knew there had to be a God.
📘📘📘📘📘
The picture above is one of only three pictures I have of my beloved dog. She died of kidney failure when I was fifteen, and as we were burying her, another huge storm came up, with thunder and lightning, completely out of nowhere. It was a beautiful day. We had to rush to get her buried.
I truly believe there was something supernatural about Gypsy. God gave her to me to show me God existed and loved me. I promised Gypsy that someday everybody would know who she was, that I would tell the world about her.
I didn't have any idea how that would happen when I was fifteen, in the dinosaur age before the internet and all the other technology that exists today, but I didn’t doubt that I would. It was a promise I made to her, and I’m thankful that I kept my promise. It was as if I made that promise to God. Dog is God spelled backward, and God revealed Himself to me in a dog that loved me, and for that, I will always be thankful.
