This weekend I got to see my baby ... my big baby.  And it did my heart so much good. 

You see, I had to leave Barnabas in the care of another family when I went through my divorce and moved back home with my parents.  They graciously let me, my three kids, the Jack Russell, the two fish tanks and four turtles descend upon their rather tranquil and orderly world.  The horse (Barnabas), however, was not welcome.  Though difficult, I knew that I was "loaning" him to a family that would take excellent care of him and I would get to see him often.  Plus, is was strictly a loan, not an adoption, as I kept reminding myself.  Barn would come back home to his Momma as soon as I had a house suitable for him, or a stable, whichever came first.

For those of you who have been on this journey with me since the beginning, you already know why I got Barnabas in the first place and what his name means.  I wanted to put hands and feet (and fur) on the love of God.  You'll just have to go back and read my first post if you're not hanging with me right now.  But what I didn't expect was to learn about receiving the love of God through my four-legged gentle giant.

Much like the prodigal son, I left him.  I left Barnabas and have been living without him for the past 16 months.  And every time I go to see him, I have this deep seeded fear stirring within me that maybe he won't remember me this time.  Or maybe he won't have missed me as much as I've missed him.  Or maybe ... just maybe ... he doesn't love me any more.  When I peel back those layers of fear, what I actually recognize is my inability to forgive myself ... for leaving him, for living without him, for the sparse and hurried time that we do have together.  And I think that I must not deserve his affection any more. 

But when I do see him, it's pretty much like a 747 of slobber and legs locks its sights on me and will not relent until I am sprawled out on the ground and gasping for breath.  That's pretty much what his love looks like.  He pursues me.  He relishes my attention.  He is giddy with affection.  And I lose all sense of self-loathing in his company. 

I bet that's what it feels like to be in God's presence.  Wow.  I wish I could take a nip of that every day. 

All my life I've heard that there's nothing like the unconditional love of a dog ... just three tiny letters that can be rearranged to represent so much More.  Maybe I was working from the wrong side of this equation all along ...

Elephant in the Room

There were four blind men wandering in the jungle.  They came upon an elephant.  The first blind man ran into the side of the elephant and pronounced, "This must be a wall because it is hard and flat."  The second man grabbed the elephant's tail and said, "This must be a vine because I can swing it."  The third blind man felt the elephant's trunk and said, "This must be a snake."  And the fourth blind man felt one of the elephant's legs and remarked, "This must be a tree trunk because it is round and immovable."  Were any of them right?

No, none of them were right because none of them could comprehend the entire animal.  Each had limited information and presumptuously made hasty and false judgement.  Their conclusions seemed right at the time, given the experience and information that each had, but each was only a small piece of a very large beast that they were critiquing.

Likewise, there are many situations in life that we cannot understand.  Many circumstances that appear to be one way when they are in reality a completely different animal.  We may come upon an obstacle in our path and have no idea how to identify it, how to interpret it, how to understand it, or how to respond to it.  We grasp for what little understanding we can and try to reconcile it with our world view or compartmentalize it somewhere that it seems to fit neatly and tidily and tuck it away.

Most of the time we may only be privy to a tiny bit of information (and false information at that), and as we all know, a tiny bit of information can be a dangerous thing.  I've heard it said many times over the last few years that perception is reality ... but it's not.  Were any of the four blind men right?

I say this, because there are many out there  wrestling over recent decisions made in my life.  Many are struggling with questions about why and how, fumbling with small bits of information and trying to make sense of it all.  Depending on which angle you're coming from, you may see a completely different animal that the man beside you.  It's not going to make sense to you, and it doesn't have to.  No one is going to be able to comprehend what happened, what truly went wrong. 

It's an elephant in the dark, and no blind man can assess it correctly.  Only God knows what happened, and only God is worthy to stand in judgement.