John 16:33 “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world!”
Stress! Who isn’t feeling it these days? As a kid dealing with parents, two brothers, and school, I’d run bawling to my bedroom, slam the door shut, play my accordion, and sing until my tears dried up, and my heart felt happy again.
Today, dealing with a husband, two dogs, and everything in between, I still run bawling to my bedroom, and slam the door shut, but my accordion is too heavy to pick up, and I rarely ever sing anymore. And when I do, the dogs run and hide!
One day, at the brink of insanity, I glared out my bedroom window and noticed that our birdhouse on the old maple tree was hanging upside down. Just like I’m feeling, I grumbled to myself. Upside down! Inside out! My world is falling apart and everything in it is screaming, “Fix me!” and I don’t want to deal with it anymore!
I took a picture of the broken, upside-down birdhouse to use in my digital art, and as a reminder that ugly things can become beautiful when we see them from a different perspective. The ugly mess on the outside may not change, but the ugly mess on the inside; our rotten attitudes, anger, and resentment will change when we ask God for help. When we read His Word and listen as He speaks, and do what He says. He never promised He’d make things easy for us. He promised that He would always be there. That He will never put on us more than we can bear. That His yoke is easy, and His burden is light.
Things in my world are still broken, but today they don’t seem as broken as they were yesterday or the day before. I’m even thinking of leaving the birdhouse hanging upside down. It’s not so bad. I kinda like it that way. Maybe the birds will like it that way, too. Maybe they’ll want all the birdhouses turned upside down. Okay, stop! One broken, upside-down birdhouse is enough!
Dogs have a way of lifting you up when you feel down.
It was at my husband’s lowest when we adopted Bella. It was at Pepper’s lowest when we adopted her.
Bella was not our first choice. Yes, she had short hair and was about the right size, but she wasn’t Rascal, our beloved Australian Shepherd mix of eight years. He loved us both, but he was definitely my husband’s dog. Sadly, we had to lay him to rest.
I didn’t want another dog. I was over it. Period. My heart can’t take kissing another pet goodbye. It hurts. It really, really hurts.
However, Buck didn’t share my feelings. Not at all. He cried and moped around making our house feel like a morgue. Day, after day. Night, after night till I couldn’t take it anymore.
Okay! Okay! We’ll get another dog!
But it wasn’t as easy as it was with Rascal that suddenly showed up at our neighbor’s house one day. Well, it didn’t happen exactly like that. Their little girl found a whole litter of abandoned pups and brought the most handsome one home with her. Soon, the novelty of owning a puppy wore off, and the little guy kept wandering over to our house.
With a little help, from us, that is, and four-year-old Jacob, our youngest grandchild. We all fell in love with Rascal, and to my surprise, he began sleeping on the front porch.
I felt sorry for him sleeping in the cold, so we bought him a bed and blanket. We didn’t want him to starve to death, so we bought him a food and water bowl, too. And of course, we didn’t want him to get bored, so we bought him some doggie toys.
Long story short, we asked the neighbors if we could keep him. We didn’t even have to beg and plead.
He’s family now and family members don’t live outside. We’re people. All of us. Two-legged, four-legged, fur or no fur; we all live together like one big happy family in the house.
For eight, short years, we loved him, and he loved us. Then, one heart-breaking day, he said goodbye.
Now, several weeks later, we’re looking in a cold, dingy cage, at a strange-looking dog, with long, skinny legs, shivering on top of a flimsy, raggedy blanket.
Nope! Not that one!
We keep on looking.
The noise and the smell of all those animals were overwhelming. But, we took our time looking in one cage after another, till we came right back to the first cage. The one with the strange little dog with long, skinny legs.
Hound mix, the sign said.
I don’t want a hound.
So, we made another trip around the dog pound. And another. We were about to leave but decided to take one more look at that strange-looking dog.
Taking a closer look at her slender body and long legs, it dawned on me. She’s a Greyhound mix!
We signed the adoption papers, had her spayed, and within a few days, she was living in our house.
Pepper was dying of starvation. She had been abandoned with fifteen other dogs. I didn’t want two dogs. Never had two dogs at one time and never wanted two dogs at one time.
But, when she put her tiny paws on my leg and jumped on my lap. Well, The rest is history.
Using Paint ShopPro ultimate 2019, I took the following pictures and turned them into art. Our dogs hate having their pictures taken, so we have to sneak up on them. Funny, funny girls.
When life gets tough, the tough get tougher, and tougher, and tougher . . .
My mother had this saying; she had lots of sayings. But this one always stuck: You can get used to hanging if you hang long enough.
Maybe it’s true, I never tried it.
What does it mean anyway? Because there are just certain things in life I can’t get used to, no matter how long I hang. No matter how long I beat and bang against it. If it hurts, I want it gone. NOW!
My husband is battling PTSD. He still cries for his shipmates that died in the fire aboard the USS Forestall fifty-six years ago. He still hears the screams and sees the charred bodies that he put in body bags. And he still feels guilty because he survived while so many others died. Survival’s guilt they call it. But they never tell you how to erase it from your mind.
The fresh-out-of-college psychologist Buck saw week after week thought she had it all figured out. Her theory was that if he kept going back through the flames and reliving that hellish day over and over again that he would eventually get used to it. That, poof! The nightmares and anger, rage, and depression would all disappear. But, her hanging theory didn’t work. The noose only tightened tighter around his neck.
Today, five years later, his PTSD has gotten progressively worse. Some days, I don’t even recognize my husband of fifty-one years. He’s a stranger. Mean and argumentative. And I don’t like him; that monster he suddenly turns into.
War breaks out in our house often. A vicious war that neither of us can win. Between my emotional madness and his angry episodes, we attack each other as if fighting a ferocious enemy. It’s like the real us stands outside our bodies, watching and wondering who the heck those two crazy people are!
Maybe this is the part where if we hang long enough we’ll get used to it.
Never! This is the part where we pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and work on fixing it. We’re tired of fighting. We’re tired of hurting each other and crying and begging for each other’s forgiveness. We’re tired of broken promises, of trying so hard and failing over and over again.
Buck’s seeing a psychiatrist, now, and I’m in cognitive therapy to get a grip and a better understanding of this ugly thing inside me called Borderline Personality Disorder.
We will get through this because we love each other. And we talk things out. We bare our souls; those raw, shameful parts of ourselves that we only share with each other.
Yes, it hurts, and we’ve been going through this for too long. And what makes it worse for Buck is that for years he blocked out the pain in his work and family and church and fishing and playing ball. He was young and strong and healthy. And now, he’s not. Now, he’s retired with mental and health issues that require lots of weekly visits to the VA.
Our world as we knew it has been turned upside down. Maybe this is all part of getting old. Maybe my expectations were set too high, and I was foolish for even thinking there is such a thing as the golden years. I don’t know. I just know that we’re going through a rough season right now, and we will have to ride it out. Because, as my mother used to say: This too shall pass.
So, the other day I was sitting on the porch petting Bella. And as usual, Pepper kept trying to squeeze between us. When that didn’t work, she clamped down on Bella’s leg and tried pulling her away. That didn’t work, either. So, she got Bella’s favorite bone and dropped it in front of her. That worked like a charm. When Bella left her spot, Pepper scooted right in for me to love on her.
It’s no secret that Lucas has had his challenges from a very young age. He didn’t hit all the monthly milestones. He couldn’t walk or talk until he was two. He visited almost every specialist NC has to offer before the age of three. There isn’t a time when Lucas hasn’t been “different”.
On our way to school this morning, the reality of his differences punched me right in the gut. He has a special friend who “gets” him that hasn’t been at school the past few days. I asked him if he has other friends to play with and his response was what I feared. “My friends tell me l can’t play with them because I’m different”.
I held back the tears to remind my precious son that being different is a good thing. I reminded him how amazing and beautiful and loving he is. And most importantly, l reminded him to be kind to others, even if kindness isn’t being shown to him.
There’s a lot of things that make Lucas different. There’s a lot of things he may never see or do. But the thing l love most about his differences, is his ability to overcome those differences and light up every room he enters in the process.
Keep being YOU, my baby boy. You’re the most imperfectly perfect human l know!
Author: Brittany: Lucas’s mom and my granddaughter
Pictures of our sweet boy, and a few of our family members. Life just wouldn’t be the same without Lucas! Click on any image to enlarge and begin the slideshow
PROVERBS 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Facebook post by Nicci Staton, my granddaughter-in-law
This morning at school drop off I gave Gideon his daily affirmation:
“Gideon, you are a man of God, you are strong, you are brave, you are mighty. You are loving and kind, generous, and a truth seeker. You are a mighty man of valor. You are holy, and you are a giver of God’s love.”
Gideon: “yup! I concur with that.”
If only we could all walk in the confidence of an eight-year-old!
You have made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Psalm 139:13
Because of many complications and surgeries after my tiny, premature baby boy was born, I could never get pregnant again. But, that’s okay. My son provided me with four grandkids, and two of those four have provided me with eight great-grandkids. AWESOME!
A few weeks after our beloved Rascal passed, Buck and I visited our local animal shelter. I really didn’t want another dog, but Buck did. And I was willing to do just about anything to ease the pain of losing our beautiful Australian Shepard. Buck and Rascal were inseparable, and he couldn’t get over losing him. So, since it was his birthday . . . Well, there you go.
There were so many dogs to choose from, but none of them appealed to either of us except the little brown dog in a big gloomy cage, laying on a skimpy, raggedy blanket. But I couldn’t wrap my heart around the idea of adopting a hound mix. It’s true, I didn’t want another long-haired dog, but a hound? However, when I discovered she was a greyhound mix, I liked the idea a little better. So, I stood glued to her cage while Buck went to the front desk and filled out the adoption papers.
Her name was Claire, but we changed it to Bella Rae; it suits her quirky personality better. And quirky is an understatement.
Bella does everything on her terms and is extremely persistent at getting what she wants. She’ll shake her head and snort, and bark and howl and will not stop until she gets what she wants, or we tell her to go lay down.
And there is nothing graceful or lady-like about Bella. Nope! She’s a brute. She stomps on our feet. She jumps all over our guests. She knocks down children and nearly licks the skin off their faces. When I put her in her crate, they let her back out again. Drives me nuts! And when she wants to lay down, she pitches a hissy fit until she’s covered from head to tail.
Bella and I butt heads. She thinks she’s the queen of the castle, but that day will never come. And since I’m the one sitting on the throne, she loves Buck the best and even sleeps with him, hogging more than half the bed.
Bella has a built-in alarm system, prompting her to awaken Buck when he stops breathing or has one of his recurring nightmares due to sleep apnea and PTSD. Although she is not service dog trained, she senses when something is out of wack and tries to fix it.
One day, during a family gathering at our house, Bella barked and kept pushing our granddaughter away from the baby carrier. At first, we were all alarmed because we’d never seen this side of Bella before. Then, we realized she was protecting our great-grand baby from her own mother!
When we first brought Bella home from the shelter, she was so skinny that she actually looked like a greyhound. Now that she’s lost her girlish figure, we can’t figure out what mix-breed she is. One thing for sure, she is definitely a hound mix, just like the label on her cage read at the animal shelter.
Then there’s Pepper. What a sight she was when we first saw her. She was abandoned with fifteen other dogs and starving to death. Nearly every bone was protruding beneath her delicate skin. My heart screamed, take her home! But I didn’t want two dogs. Never had two dogs at one time, and didn’t want two dogs at one time. Bella was more than enough dog for me.
So, we drove home without her. She had her mom and her two brothers, a few cats, and a bunch of other dogs to hang with. She’ll be fine, I reassured my heart. Besides, the neighbors are kinda, sorta looking after them.
The next day, I called animal control to find out that they were already working on it. I told the man I was talking to about the little black female and how I didn’t think she would survive the week. He assured me that she was fine and if I wanted her, to go get her.
She was so happy to see me again that I wished I had rescued her the day before. I could have saved her from one more night of misery. Buck was all for it, so I have no one to blame but myself. But, we’re here now, and she’ll never go hungry again or spend another night out in the freezing cold.
It was love at first sight when the two dogs met; just like I thought it would be. Bella acted as if Pepper was a live toy for her to play with, pawing and chasing her around the house. But, Pepper had the upper hand, or should I say upper paw, on Bella because she was tiny and used to having to defend herself against bigger dogs. So, when she had enough of Bella’s rough-necking, she’d run under the sofa in the living room, stick out her leg, and swat at Bella when she ran by.
Weighing in at only eight pounds, and other than a slight case of mange on both ears, the vet gave her a clean bill of health. However, she continued eating bugs in the yard for months after we captured her. It’s a shame what careless, irresponsible people put their animals through.
Pepper is the sweetest dog ever. Her long, slender body and floppy ears suggested to the vet that she is a Dachshund Labrador mix. Where Bella is highly excitable, Pepper is calm and patient. However, she is full of energy and jumps sky-high when she gets excited, and still, after three years, she’s a chewer. The other day, I was looking for my other shoe and there it was in the middle of Buck’s bed, soaking wet. I found it before she chewed it to death.
Thank goodness, Pepper doesn’t jump on the kitchen counters and table anymore. But, she and Bella will drag a loaf of bread off the counter and devour it in a matter of minutes before I go in the kitchen and discover the empty, shredded bag on the floor.
Bella and Pepper are our fur babies. They fill each day with love and slobbery kisses. They make us laugh. They make us happy. They fill the void and sadness we felt when we lost Rascal. I’m thankful for our two dogs.
Bella and Pepper; especially Bella, doesn’t like having their picture taken. Bella has such a beautiful face with big, soulful eyes that are difficult to capture. But, here’s a few that we had to sneak and snap quickly.
Using Paint Shop Pro 2019, I turn ordinary photos into works of art. I also create picture tubes, bookmarks, Facebook Covers, cards, tags, and more. I don't sell my art, therefore, all my creations are free for your own personal use.
Straight from the Heart 