Triple Falls

I am wired strangely. Whenever I most need to sleep, I don't. It is only when the stress level is low and my body could probably do fine on 5 hours that I manage to snooze for the suggested 9.2. So I lay awake a good  portion of the night last night, reconfiguring in my mind the luggage I hoped to carry on the plane to Amy's house today.

It would have been better to have filled my head with images of the Triple Falls hike we had done that afternoon, en route home from the Beatles Tribute show. It was a perfect day for hiking, and Asherel's friend Emma was such an easy going companion as the three of us headed up the steep mountain.
"How about if I just find a picture on my iPod of a waterfall and we can just rest here?" suggested Asherel.
"Please tell me you don't mean that," I said.

Emma is a rock climber and there were rocks galore to climb, as long as one didn't mind 3 million gallons of water per second splashing against you. I dipped my feet in the frigid mountain water and watched the girls, each second weighing the potential for death or dismemberment in their chosen activity. I try not to let my own fears translate to too much restriction on those in my charge, but sometimes it is hard. Especially given the slippery rocks and the copperhead snake Emma had recoiled from as we reached this little paradise.

So I laid down some rules that I hoped would keep instant death at bay, and then held my breath as they scampered.  Then they looked back and Asherel beckoned to me to follow. They were going up...high...atop a boulder.
I shook my head. Other people were silhouetted against the sky, a couple of cliffs above them, standing by a third cascading deluge of water. They were tiny against the blue.

"Don't go any higher!" I called.
A lady with a Dalmatian passed me.
"It is really not as bad as it looks," she urged me, "I climb this all the time."
"Does your dalmatian smile?" I asked. As a breed, most dalmatians smile and it is why I love the breed. We owned one that smiled and one that didn't.
"Yes," she answered.
How could I not trust a lady with a smiling dalmatian?

So I groaned to my feet and climbed cautiously up after the girls. Emma led the way, knowing better than we which path would lead most likely to our chances of returning for our shoes in one piece. We reached the top of the first flat expanse where the second water fall took its plunge.
"No higher," I said, glancing at the view below with only a slight lurch of my stomach.
"It is fine, really,"  said the smiling Dalmation lady, who had left the happy dog with her husband below.
The girls looked beseechingly at me.
"Fine," I said, "But don't go anywhere near the edge when we get up there or I will die."
So the three of us, and the smiling Dalmation Lady all climbed the boulder to the next large flat table of rock. This time as I looked down, my stomach did more than a slight lurch, but the view was spectacular.
The smiling Dalmation lady took our picture so we could prove we had been there. And then the girls started to place their hands on a fourth upward soaring cliff.
"No," I said, "Not that I don't want to, of course, but we are out of time."

We climbed carefully back down, and when we reached the bottom, I cried out, "I did it!!!"
Emma pumped her fists in the air, and Asherel looked less embarrassed than  usual from my outbursts.

As we headed back to the car,  I told the girls about the story the dalmation lady told me. Two men with a canoe had done the climb we had just done and then gone down the waterfall in the canoe.
"They did it several times, til they flipped over."
"Don't worry," said Emma, "I promise I would never go down a waterfall in a canoe. I wonder why anyone would do that? It's so dangerous!"
"Well rock climbing is dangerous too," I pointed out, "But each time you do something and get good at it, you want to do something a little harder. I never thought I would dare go past the bunny slope skiing....but soon the bunny slope was boring."

And maybe that is why God sends us so many challenges in life. If we just hang out at those first baby steps of faith, we never know what mountains we might be able to conquer. We might never see the magnificent views that He has created for only those who don't lose heart. Life is filled with frights, and dangers, and it was never meant to be viewed from an iPod.

Isaiah 7: 3-4
³ Then the LORD said to Isaiah, “Go out, you and your son Shear-Jashub, to meet Ahaz at the end of the aqueduct of the Upper Pool, on the road to the Launderer’s Field. ⁴ Say to him, ‘Be careful, keep calm and don’t be afraid. Do not lose heart..."

Clouds as Ear Plugs

The next dog won't have one smidgen of terrier in it. It won't dig out of fences, bark at owls all night, chew apart heavy plastic crates, dissemble wire crates, or break little toes while playing tug with leash. If there is a next dog. Even cute and fluffy has its limits. Man does not live on cute alone, but on every minute of sleep that terriers deprive him of. I believe that is in the Bible, and if it isn't, it ought to be.

We set Lucky up with a nice fluffy soft bed in the bottom of his palatial plastic crate Carol had given us. We served him an appetizer to make his stay more pleasant, and turned back his sheets. We closed the door assuring him that room service would be back in the morning to serve him a complimentary full buffet breakfast.

And then, the sawing and pounding and clawing and grinding began. In the morning, a small slat of the thick plastic crate was pulverized. Plastic dust marked the demolition spot. The crate is not yet destroyed and useless, but one more night of the Terrier Take-down, and it will be. The donated wire crate was a little too small for Lucky, so under dire threat from Arvo who is losing sleep in buckets and is not at all happy about it, I went out to find an indestructible wire crate. It is him or the dog, he warned, and it isn't him that will be leaving our happy abode.  We donated both crates to Hollow Creek Farm where dogs are homeless, but not deranged.

I think this qualifies as one of those struggles in life where God is patiently trying to mold and shape me. It has been 8 years of trying to keep Lucky contained and civilized. Our expectations are not outrageous. We don't want him barking all night, and we don't want him escaping over the fence and heading off to busy suicide highways. I think we have tried everything we could, and now crating him, the dog who hates to be confined, is our last resort.

I have a few of these constant, ever present struggles in life. Paul of the Bible talks about a thorn in his side that despite constant pain, struggle, and prayer, the Lord saw fit not to remove. We all have them.  A sarcastic nature that wounds over and over again but can't be reined in, a rebellious child that we can't love into returning, a continual battle with mounting expenses and dwindling resources, a body that is growing weaker despite all our efforts to stop the flow of time, an algebra problem that we think is unsolvable though the text insists it can be done.....

Those little irritants sit like a tick in the back of our mind, growing and bloating as it sucks the life blood out of us.  God sees fit to let them remain sometimes. I have long since learned that "why" is a question God almost never answers. He never answered Job who begged to have counsel with Him over that very thing.  God only answers "how" with any consistency.  How  then are we to live, given these thorns that prick and bleed?
Turn your eyes to Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, He tells us.
That's it? That's the best the creator of the Universe can offer?
It is. The Best. The Very Best. In the end, it is the Only thing.
When my eye is on Jesus, completely on Jesus, I don't see the dog eating concrete walls; I don't hear the grinding of canine teeth. I see my Savior, and the joy that one day will be mine... a good night's sleep with clouds as earplugs.

Hebrews 12:1-3 (New International Version)

¹Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. ²Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. ³Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.