Excerpt
By Lorilyn Roberts
...ask the animals, and they will teach you - Job 12:7
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 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.
**
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Lorilyn Roberts is a Christian author who writes children's
picture books, adult nonfiction, memoirs, and a young adult Christian fantasy
series, Seventh Dimension.
Lorilyn graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of
Alabama, which included international study in Israel and England. She received
her Masters in Creative Writing from Perelandra College and is a graduate of
the Institute of Children's Literature.
Lorilyn is the founder of the John 316 Marketing Network, a
network of Christian authors who are passionate about promoting books with a
Christian worldview.
To learn more about Lorilyn, please visit her website at http://lorilynroberts.com. You can follow
her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/lorilynroberts
