Keeping my cells aligned

It's not like the view outside our yard is a whole lot better than what is inside our fence. There are no sparkling lakes down the street in which to swim. There are no purple mountains majesty to scale. There is no reason, not one, for our stupid dog to want to keep escaping. I walk him several miles a day. He is fed delicious food and has clean water always available. He has a large yard with trees and squirrels, and a dog door that gives him access to it.

"What is your reason this time?"I asked him. Lucky hung his head.

I had been asleep at 6:00 but Arvo had been up...woken earlier by Lucky pushing his nose against the bedroom door.  While Arvo was eating breakfast, Lucky had escaped over the backyard fence, and raced off while a dog walker went by and the dog erupted in barking, which alerted poor Arvo who then sprinted after Lucky. He later found a place along the back fence where Lucky had pushed the extended wire down, the wire meant to make the fence unscalable.

For the past three nights, an owl has visited nearby. As soon as he begins his mournful, "whowho who who", Lucky dashes outside barking loud enough to warn the neighbors even beyond the group that is petitioning to have dogs banned from our home. We had tried the citronella bark collar some years ago- a collar that squirts citronella up a dog's snout each time he barks. It worked until he learned to bark til the citronella was gone with a quick series of lemon scented eruptions. Then it, like our fence climbing solutions, was useless.

We don't know what else to do. We will have to crate him at night.... which means buying a crate instead of a nice dress for Matt's wedding.  Then we will have to dig a moat around the fence and fill it with crocodiles. I just see no other solution.

Sometimes problems seem unsolvable. Answers just don't parade in bright colors before me, and life, at least temporarily seems to be nothing but struggle. The barking/escaping dog is just one example.  When there is one irritant constantly pricking the calm surface of existence, it makes all the other irritants even more pressing, more daunting.

My friend recently sent me an article that shows photos of water molecules before and after encouraging, kind words are spoken to the water. In the pre-kindness photos, the water molecules are dark and in disarray, ugly. In the post-kindness photos, the water molecules are beautiful geometric arrangements. Now I did notice that in the post-kindness photos, the water molecules had 6 points.... suspiciously like snowflakes. I also could not find any corroboration that this article was more than a nice but  fabricated bit of mood boosting poppycock. However, I do know that when one thing is perpetually eating away at you, all things seem to become more difficult to handle. It doesn't take a scientific examination of molecular structure to know that my molecules are not happy about the perennially escaping dog.  And that nagging problem that is lurking in the back of my mind colors the whole panorama of life.

I think that is why Jesus warns us , "In this world you will have troubles...."  He doesn't want us to be caught unawares. He doesn't tell us we might struggle....He tells us we WILL.  He knows our molecular structure will be in disarray. But He also knows how to pull all our ugly cells back into beautiful and glorious harmony with the only words of encouragement that I have ever known to truly work....

"But take heart! I have overcome the world."

With my cells aligned, I go forth to overcome the dog.

John 16:33
³³"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."