Fleeting Joy

I think my teenager wants me to have a heart attack. I was nervously counting down the dogs as they ran in her Agility class...knowing she had to be up soon for her run, yet she calmly sat in the stands, listening to her iPod. Finally, I ran down to check the board with the line up and order of dogs yet to run. There were 6 dogs till Honeybun's run...and each dog takes about 30 seconds. That gave Asherel 3 minutes to get Honeybun down there, warmed up , and ready for her run. I raced back up to the stands and yanked the earphone out of her ear.
"You have 3 minutes!"
She sauntered down.
Honeybun could not care less. Nothing matters to Honeybun except that she gets the juicy morsels that reward her for pretty much ANYTHING except for outright leaving the agility ring.
I don't think Asherel understands how many years I age watching her in her agility trials. Or maybe she does, and that is her plan. I think she knows it drives me crazy to wait till the last minute and then mosey down like sludge.
I hope one day she has a daughter just like her. And I mean that in the best possible way...
So why, every single time as we drive home from these agility trials, do I look back at our snoring dog, and my daughter hooked up to her iPod and think, "That was fun."?

There are a lot of horrible things happening right now. Our country is on the brink of falling off a fiscal cliff, rancor is at an all time high despite promises of bipartisanship and compromise, and Israeli civilians, families, are being bombed like crazy by the Hamas. Death, persecution, and suffering are all around us. We should all be on our knees praying...but I think also, it is very good to spend time with a child you adore watching her run a happy dog in a swirl of joy that we all know is ephemeral.

2 Timothy 3:10-11 (NIV)
You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, [11] persecutions, sufferings---what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them.



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