Reason Breeds Insanity

Have you ever noticed that once you get going on a paper, it seems like it gets easier as you go. This one isn’t too bad. I just want to get it done.

I think today is good. Last night not so good. You know how it is when you are just looking for a fight or an argument. Well, apparently that was me last night. It’s over now, and I think I am over it, too. Nothing a long car ride with the poochies and a couple of slushies couldn’t handle.

We are supposed to close on our houes next Thursday at 3PM, so think happy thoughts for me then. I wish I knew whether or not I’d be in the Ph.D. program, it would make life lots easier. I am thinking about what I read on Sarah’s blog the other day. I need to scale down. Funny that we were struggling with the same thing at the same time. I think if I get into the Ph.D. program, I am going to scale way back: maybe sell the car, the computer, a television, a few other things. It is my goal to help out a few people with some mission trips they are going on, maybe donate the rest to Compassion or Heifer, or put it in the bank for a future mission trip of my own. Who knows. It is up in the air! I just know I have too much crap!

So I am better today because I have to be. I have 50 pages to write in the next three or four days.

I am looking forward to having actual days off for the last couple of months of summer. I am looking forward to closing on our house, knowing whether or not I am in the Ph.D. program, knowing whether or not I have an assistantship, and knowing that things are looking up. I am optimistic today, which is something that I am usually not. For me, my new life begins when I want it to.

For a while, maybe even before lent, maybe since I quit at Grace,I haven’t been plugged in with God, or that higher power that is out there: Nature, God, or whatever you call [Them]. If you know me, you know that the constant struggle of my life is one of belief, of faith, of spiritual security. It is so refreshing to talk to people who “know.” I don’t. I feel, but I don’t know. Soemtimes. I look at other faiths and I see things, tenets, in their belief systems that make so much sense. I borrow from them, but then I feel guilt because it seems like I have been whoring around on my God. I feel a bit like Gomer, maybe. I feel like all I need to do is read more, pray more, worship more, and I will be able to wrap my faith up in the neat little package that I see other people carrying around with them. Sometimes I wish the FCS would sell little syringes filled with Jesus Juice, so I could just give myself a daily injection and not have to worry abotu it. It would be easier. But I struggle, almost constantly with our world, my place in it, and my responses to it.

I will tell you the truth. I have been considering buying a Neapolitan Mastiff, a two to three thousand dollar dog. When I got home last night, my mail was on the table. I had received a Compassion International Magazine, and as I looked through the pictures, I thought what the FUCK is wrong with my perspective? There are some thousands of children dying daily because they don’t have food, or their parents have passed their HIV status on down the line, and I, I, I, I am considering spending not just hundreds, but thousands, of dollars on a dog. WHAT THE FUCK AM I THINKING? I will tell you. I am thinking about ME!

I am thinking along with the Psalmist: “Yet, I am a worm and not a man. I am scorned by humanity and despised by people.” I am a worm because my priorities are so misplaced. On the note of Psalm 22, I was talking with a friend of mine at work about the movie The Passion of the Christ. He said what bothered him was that 45 minutes of the movie showed “the guy that I try to live like every minute of every day” being beaten and tortured. He said it really messed with him because that isn’t the Jesus he is trying to live like, he is trying to live like the Jesus that the movie didn’t show, the one who quoted Psalm 22, and taught others how to incorporate its sentiments into their lives. The beaten Jesus isn’t the one we needed to see, we needed to see whatever happened the rest of the 72 hours of the Passion.

I feel like a worm for being so self-absorbed. I was talking to a friend this morning and she told me to quit burying my feelings. I have to. I am the person that people talk to, not the person who does the talking.

I want my new life to start now.

Interesting that the word we use to describe being heavily involved in something also means used up. Grief, I am learning, consumes people. See I think that the hard part of this for me is that I invest. Another capitalist word. What would you say instead of invest if you were communist? The hard part of this for me is that I share myself so deeply. I don’t even like dogs. Well, I do, but I would choose a cat over a dog any day. Except Pippin. I can’t explain it. I am sure by now that you are sick of hearing about my love affair with a dog, but his eyes haunt me. His big soft paws haunt me. His need to leap up into my face to be eye to eye with me haunts me. I was smitten with this dog. I am smitten with this dog.

I think Pippin’s death has triggered some things in me, too, things that I don’t want to admit about myself. Death doesn’t scare me, but I know it is there. I keep thinking this could have been my dad or either of my grandmas. It could have been any person I know. What scares me is that when people die, I can’t access that part of me that grieves. I have had friends die, great aunts and uncles, and never have I been as sad as when Pippin died. Why? Do I care more about a dog than a person? I am trying to write about Kate Chopin and Mary Cassatt, and I don’t care about them right now. I don’t care how they represented women or how they felt about the state of women in their time. I want my fucking dog back. I want the last six months of my life not to have been complete shit. I want something fucking marvelous to happen in my life like right fucking now! I want to go get pissed and not think about it. I am sick to death of sadness.

I sort of feel like Job, but I can’t say that I am confident enough to know that God will bring good of this. I think I may be more inclined to be like his wife: “Why don’t you just curse Gods and die?” I am waiting for the sores to break out all over my body. I think I have of shards of clay at home that I could scrape them with.

Realistically, I know my life is good. I have food, shelter, a job, clothes, friends, family and all those things that make life good. I am not in a country that is being constantly bombed in the name of Christianity or democracy. I am not three years old wondering why I have no parents because they both died of AIDS. I am am not wandering around looking for food or clean water or sitting in a heap dying of a perfectly curable disease.

So I wrestle. I am devastated, but I am sated.

I know that I am blessed beyond my wildest imagination, and I know that I am redeemed and in grace. I am filled with glory and righteousness. I know that better times will come. I know I miss my dog.

Who knew a dog would get to me the way that big oaf got to me. I looked for other dogs on the Internet yesterday, but none are as charming as Pippin was. I am sure my sadness has much more to do with the last six months of my life than just with Pippin, but my heart hurts nonetheless.

He died. We buried him at my mom and dad’s house with the rest of the deceased animals. We wrapped him in his favorite blanket and gave him his shreds o’ Canadian goose he loved to carry around in his mouth. I don’t think I’ve seen an animal die so quickly. Two days ago he started throwing up. Then he got really lathargic and wouldn’t even take his medicine. Bec spent an hour coaxing 15cc’s of Gatorade into him, he drank a bit of water. She walked the other two dogs, came back into their house and he was lying in his own vomit. He was a very persnickety dog, so Bec knew he was almost gone. She went into the house and called the vet, then when she went back into the shed, he was breathing his last. CPR didn’t even work, so he is hanging out with my grandpas and the other animals somewhere. I am sure that humans and animals go to the same place, otherwise I don’t want to go there.

It is hard. Pippin was just what I always wanted in a dog. Big. Galumphy. And totally loving. Lily is sad. So is Sydney. They are just pacing around in their house looking for Pippin. Bec said the sweetest thing was that Lily started crying and then she let her out and she laid down next to him and licked his face. How sad. Death: it seems as if it is constantly licking at our heels.