Sunday, November 18, 2012

Following a Call




We were on the way to the dog trial, and traffic suddenly slowed to a crawl, for no apparent reason.
"What's up with all the Corvettes?" asked Asherel.
I looked in the right lane. For as far as the eye could see were Corvettes driving in the right lane of 485 N. Red , blue, yellow, green, black, silver....all with some cute license plate like "born2run" or "Igotmine" or "retiredhowboutu". There had to have been hundreds, if not thousands of Corvettes. Fortunately, the left lane was moving just a tad under the speed limit, so we slowly passed the miles and miles of Corvettes, and made it to the agility trial with plenty of time to spare. The Corvettes were all following one another, on a trail that seemed to have no beginning or end.
"How do they find each other to join the parade?" I wondered aloud.
"Someone must have called them, and they all met someplace," Asherel decided.

Later, I was drying my hands in the bathroom, standing for several rounds of the hot air dryer as it was very cold in the Arena. A lady came to dry her hands, and I noticed she was sleeveless.
"Aren't you freezing?" I asked, as I smacked the button to restart Round 7 of the hot air on my numb fingers.
"No, I'm always hot," she said, and then, one thing let to another, and soon we were standing outside the restroom, and I heard her entire amazing story. This woman had a brain tumor 14 years ago. The kind she had was enormously invasive and only 20 % of the people who get that kind of cancer survive. The surgeon spent 8 hours taking away a whole piece of her skull, and then carving away at the cancerous tentacles that reached into every section of her brain. When she awoke from the surgery, her family was told she would likely never walk or talk or care for herself again, if she survived. She could do almost nothing independently. However, for a full year, she spent every moment trying to regain all she had lost. And agility with her dog helped her. She could not walk without falling, so at first had to wear a helmet when she did the agility trials. She could not remember more than one or two things at a time, so could not at first complete the twenty jump course. People would line the ring and call out to her where to go next. She would fall, pick herself up, and find the next jump with her dog. They helped each other stumble to the next jump, and the people lining the ring called out instructions.
Slowly she got better. She could never remember the jumps in her mind, but if she walked the course over and over again, her muscles would remember.
"Now, 14 years later, I have a full time job, I run agility, I take care of my home..."
I would never have known by looking at her that she had inched her way back from such a devastating disability. It was as impossible to me as seeing a line of Corvettes stretching to the horizon following a call to gather for no reason I could imagine.

I read a book by a new author last night. It was a free ebook on Kindle, and I thought it was very good. It ended with the hero realizing in a burst of tears and revelation, "God cares for me! He really does!"

That is how I felt as I listened to this woman's tale.

As Asherel and I drove home from the trial, I asked her if she thought she could teach me to run agility.
"Sure," she said.
"But I have such a horrible memory...I just don't know if I will ever be able to remember the jump sequence."
"If the lady with the brain tumor did," said Asherel, "So could you."
"Yes," I agreed.
And besides, God cares for me. He really does.

John 16:27 (NIV)
No, the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.

Deuteronomy 23:5 (NIV)
However, the Lord your God would not listen to Balaam but turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loves you.

-save a dog- hollowcreekfarm.org

2 comments:

  1. What was the name of the book? Sometimes it's hard for me emotionally to believe He cares. I believe in my mind, for I trust Him, but in my heart I'm always afraid.

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    Replies
    1. Prime of Life, by PD Beckenham. It is fiction, but it really made me think about all the times when God has been showing He cared...and I ignored the signs....

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