Trapped

The Terminex man came to work on the outdoor termite traps and so as I always do, I shut the dog door so the dogs could not get out and lunch on either termite poison or termite poison dispenser's legs. Lucky had been perfectly contentedly lying on his bed, until I locked the dog door, at which point, he became psychotically discontented, and began pacing and lunging at the dog door and then prowling along the house for some sort of escape hatch. I further barricaded the dog door with piles of furniture and then hobbled on my broken toe with a deep tired sigh and threw myself down to continue prep for my DI team.

A few minutes later, the Terminex man was knocking on the back door.... with Lucky beside him. I leapt to my feet, shrieked as my toe bore weight, and limped to the door.

"How did he get out?" I cried. The dog door was still locked, the piles of furniture blocking it undisturbed. The front door was closed, and indeed, Honeybun was barking like a fiend looking woefully out of that closed door. The Terminex man shrugged his shoulders, smiling. Lucky was smiling too, and wagging his tail. I let Lucky back in, which he acceded to cheerfully, and went back to icing my toe.

Knock, knock. The Terminex man was back at the door.
"I think I see how your dog got out," he said," The screen on your side window is broken and the window is open."
I hobbled into our bedroom to the screen that Arvo had just replaced a few weeks ago. The little table under the window was slightly shifted, and the piles of things I was gathering to pack for the DI global finals were scattered on the floor. The window was open 5 inches, and the new screen was flapping in the breeze. Lucky had climbed out the window, ripped open the screen and then dropped 7 feet to the concrete driveway below. He should've been walking on 4 crushed tibias, but instead, he was happily lying back down on his bed, now that he had proved his point.

It was not the best of days yesterday, and not just because of my broken toe, or busted window screen, or even backed up garbage disposal that I was unable to fix, or the water line to the new refrigerator not working. None of those events felled me. But as I checked my email for a final time that night, there was a message from the agent that had sent my book back for revision and been so encouraging.... and she said the Christian message in my book wasn't quite fleshed out enough for their readers, though the story was hard to turn down and the writing was much better in this revision. The last agent had turned it down because it was "too Christian". I have been writing and revising for two years now, and now it is not "Christian" enough.

I wrote her back, telling her my hope and prayer had been to keep the message subtle enough that a hurting secular world would be willing to read it, find hope and inspiration, and especially maybe God. I guess I was too subtle.

And then Holly my sister informed me that the tag-line from my iPod that I have been sending out for a week now which is supposedly the link to my blog is mistyped and no one can link to my blog from it. It says vicky kaseorg blogsot. Blog SOT. Not blogspot..... but Blog SOT. I must admit, being a SOT, and imbibing heavily of mind numbing and pain killing beverages did sound tempting, but it had probably not helped along my "Christian" message to my agent... or my once hoped for agent.

I wanted to praise God for my trials, knowing my character was being molded and refined. When God closes a door, Lucky finds a window....but I could not see any window that I could manage to climb out of with my broken toe throbbing. I was about to shut down the computer and go cry in bed, when there was another note from the agent, "But if you do revise, please remember us to send it to."

My toe is still broken, the screen is still flapping in the breeze, and I still feel like crying. But there is a little light squeaking through as the morning of a new day stretches awake.

2 Corinthians 4: 8-9
⁸We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; ⁹persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.