And today I cried over a dog. You guys! What the?!? I don’t even like dogs.
The family I’m staying with has 2 dogs. One they love and one they… let’s say… tolerate. Yep. That’s a good word for it.
The one they love went with me out to the barn today to take care of the chickens. Pretty normal. I go and say 'good morning' to the chickens, feed them, and collect the eggs… he follows me…. cuz I’m basically livin’ the Cinderella dream over here making friends with the animals... while waiting for prince charming, obviously. My fairy tale, however, came to a screeching halt today.
I left the barn and the dog they love was nowhere to be found.
Nowhere.
The dog they tolerate…
Oh, he sat there and mocked me. It was like this... “Haha… now you’re just stuck with me.” look.
I think he hates me. But I’m comfortable with that. I was not comfortable with losing their favorite dog though. And I’m pretty sure I instantly started having flashbacks to my duck adventure last summer. Cue instant tears.
You guys! I lost their favorite dog. I had one job…. Keep the favorite dog alive. And I lost him. Everything else was negotiable, except the favorite dog.
I may or may not have just stood on the porch sobbing at this point. To be continued….
And for some reason today I got thinking about the day I closed on my house. Probably because I was contemplating the possibility of soon being homeless if I did not find the favorite dog.
On Wednesday, January 13th, I closed on my house. It was a day that couldn’t come fast enough. And didn’t come fast at all. Story of my life. I had listed my house in the middle of October. How that all went down and what it led to is another crazy story for another day. The selling of the house went down quickly, well with two attempts, but still quickly… and then... dragged for months. Originally I was supposed to close on the house in the beginning of December. And then it got pushed to the week after Christmas. And then the day before I was supposed to move out, which was two days before Christmas, (I don’t know why but that seems vital to the story), my realtor called…
I love my realtor, but I always got a little nervous when I would get phone calls from her… because nothing seemed to go right in my life. Well, I guess what I should say is that nothing was going the way I wanted it to. This day was no exception. My closing date got pushed back. By three weeks. January 13th. Which apparently, a push back that far, had never happened to my realtor before. But there’s a first for everything and so let me just volunteer as tribute here. Why not?!? I definitely cried on my realtor…. And then cried on my parents… and then cried on no less than two friends.
Three more weeks alone in an almost empty house. What was the Lord doing to me? I was so over being alone in a house. And why could nothing go easy? I later found out the reason for this push back on the closing date. It had nothing to do with me and everything to do with someone else in my life and something they were going through. The Lord changed the closing date of my house because he needed me there because he needed me not to be somewhere else because he had work to do that he wanted me distanced from. Because.... He was protecting me and helping someone else. And he let me in on that little secret. After the fact…. But still… I’ll take what I can get.
And so, when January 13 finally arrived I was a basket case right up until signing the papers. I was so sure something was going to happen. That it was all going to fall apart. I really felt that the Lord had reassured me that it would all go through, buuuuut let me remind you I struggle with the whole doubting and trusting thing and this was no exception.
And you know what the Lord did? He sent a friend my way. As I sat down to sign my papers the lady that walked in as my signing agent was a friend. I knew she was a signing agent. She’s the only signing agent I know. I didn’t know where or how often she worked. She would contract out so she was all over the place. I hadn’t really talked to her in over a year... pre-covid. And the Lord sent her my way on this day. Want to hear something even crazier? As I sat there waiting to sign the papers, this friend’s husband texted me. A totally random text, just asking a random question. It had been almost a year since I had talked to or heard from him too. He didn’t know I was sitting across from his wife. She didn’t know I was going to be her client on this day. Three little puzzle pieces that just so perfectly came together on this day in this moment.... Because friends, God is good. You'll begin to see this reoccurring theme in these blogs.
And so on January 13, I closed on my house, got a nice size check, and got to walk away smiling because the Lord worked in some pretty cool ways.
On January 14th, I paid off my car.
On January 15th, I got into a car accident.
Because this is my life.
By car accident, what I mean is that I avoided the other car that was going to collide with me and hit a mailbox. And by hit a mailbox, what I mean is that I obliterated that mailbox. Mail and mailboxes pieces everywhere. And $7000 of damage to my car.
Go big or go home.
This falls under one of those “Really, Lord, Why?” moments. Because I didn’t have enough to deal with already. It was a rough day. And so when I went home that evening, the family that I just moved in with asked me what I wanted for dinner. In case you didn’t know… when you wreck a car you get to pick what’s for dinner.
Chocolate.
"I want chocolate," I told them. "Because that’s the kind of day it’s been."
They laughed at me and decided on pizza. I was on board with that.
I went with my friend to go pick up the pizza. They messed up the order and so it took awhile as we waited for them to make it. When they brought the order out, they profusely apologized and let us know that they didn’t charge us for their mistake and threw in something extra for us.
I laughed and made a joke to my friend about it being chocolate.
When we got home and opened the bag, there was an box in there. We opened the box and there in that white Styrofoam box was a piece of chocolate cake. My friend just handed it to me and said, “Here you go, apparently this was meant to be yours.”
You guys, the Lord gave me chocolate for dinner. Because say it with me now... God is good.
Back to the dog.
An hour of sobbing and searching and calling out his name, he just came trotting around the front of the barn, without a care in the world. From where? I have no idea. I have since learned that apparently in the past the neighbor has fed him treats and he will sneak off sometimes in hopes of scoring one of those. I hope he came up empty on that treasure hunt today. Is that mean?