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Our dog recently survived Blasto thanks to the doctors and staff at the Ely Vet Clinic and modern medicine. THANK YOU! He’s a new dog in many ways and his successful comeback highlights how terrible you feel when you don’t feel healthy. When normal is an incredible high point. Isn’t that the truth in our own lives? When we aren’t healthy, when we’ve got a nasty virus like we’ve all been privy to this long winter, don’t we long to just reach the average, the norm? Especially if we’ve been diagnosed with “C” word or another disease, we long for the status quo. We’re even taught to strive for a “new normal” in some of these situations.
Stress can do this to us as well, it can also accompany any or all of the above, and we know that it can be a killer on its own. This is one of the reasons that I have pets. If you know me, have read things I’ve written in the past, or possibly even heard me speak, you know that my faith is important to me. If you don’t know me, then by way of a little introduction to myself, let me just say that I believe that “belief” in Jesus Christ is an action verb. Belief isn’t just the realization of an idea as truth. To have faith is “to faith” as in to -- both believe, to trust if you will, and to ACT on that belief, act with that belief and act because of that belief. I don’t always get it write (see that’s a visual representation of a mistake, right?) It was also supposed to be sort of a pun.
One of the things that I believe, in this case, is that God gave us the gift of animals that we domesticate as pets for many reasons. To teach us about ourselves. To teach us humility. To teach us about unconditional love. To teach us responsibility. All of the “ilities.” Stress is driven by anxiety, fed by worry, grown by mental defeat. I freely admit that aside from the health and happiness of my family, the same for my pets contributes highly to my stress. That and whenever I need a plumber. You feel my pain, I know.
And yet, nothing washes the stress away quite like a purring cat in your lap. Nothing calms me quite as much as a sleeping dog curled up beside me with their paws twitching as they race through their field of dreams. Nothing swallows my anxiety like looking into the deep pools of my pet’s eyes, or waking from a nightmarish sleep and reaching out to touch them in the dark. They are a gift. A physical representation of love. As such, I treat them with the respect and love they are owed.
Their lives are obviously shorter than ours, but that only seems to deepen the bonds we share. Each of them has been, is today, and will remain, one of the best of my lifelong friends. That’s not really too odd, given the amount of time and experiences we share.
We’re looking forward to hiking with Mr. David Byrne this summer. Looking forward to him being able to race around the yard again as he chases the birds in the sky. I’m looking forward to reading in my Adirondack chair under the flowering crabapple tree with him sitting on my lap or going fishing together and watching him try to get the bluegill out of the bucket. I’m looking forward to him just being normal.
As we strive for perfection more and more often, as we compete and scramble and fight to get ahead, I wonder if we don’t sometimes just miss all the potential that comes with “normal”? Today, I’m thankful for it.
