Through A Woman's Eyes: Anything

Martha Hynson

Through A Woman's Eyes: Anything
Yesterday morning, I walked into my living room and found a dog on my table. A fifty pound dog. Standing. On the table.
Oh, Emma. What did I ever do without you? I mean besides eating off a clean table and all the other usual stuff people do when they aren’t sharing their home with a drooling, shedding, chewing beast.
Besides four-month-old Emma, (who was not my idea, by the way) we have a ten-year-old Shih Tzu named Ziggy that was a gift from Santa when our daughter, Ally, was nine. He’s pretty much a member of our family. Ally has taught him at least a half dozen tricks and has taken him out to go potty at least a half dozen times. In ten years. I kinda thought he’d be the last in a long line of furry, four-legged family members which, over the years, has included everything from gerbils to miniature horses. With our kids all grown, I naively thought we were heading into our pet-free years. My husband, however, had other plans. He wanted a big dog. A really big dog. Like 180 pounds, or so, big. Did I mention that this was not my idea?
You see, Emma is not our first giant dog. Before Emma, we had another mastiff named Belle. That was different, though, because Belle lived outside. She was hardly any trouble at all except for during thunderstorms when she became nervous and ate pieces of wood off the side of our house. She lived to be eleven years old which, for a dog of that size, equals about 111 human years, but she thought she was a baby until the day she died. If you sat down, she’d try to climb into your lap. You couldn’t help but love her.
 But, you know, it’s complicated loving someone who tries to eat your house, and I wasn’t eager to dive into another relationship like that. That’s what I was thinking when a friend called me one day to ask about our experience owning a mastiff. She was considering getting one. I tried to paint the complete picture for her including both the good and the bad. I didn’t know what she had decided to do until we happened to run into her sweet family shortly after Emma had come to live with us. The conversation went something like this.
Me: Did y’all end up getting a mastiff?
Friend’s husband: SHE got a mastiff.
Me: Oh, we got one, too. How’s yours doing?
Friend’s husband: He ate our screen porch.
My husband (grasping at straws): Well, we don’t have a screen porch.
Her husband: Neither do we.
Besides the “eating the house” thing, having a dog is just a huge commitment. I had been asking God to do anything He wanted in my life. I was prepared to be surprised, knowing that His ways and plans are so much greater than my own. I expected something big. I expected God to move in unexpected ways. And, truthfully, I wasn’t at all sure how a puppy would fit into those plans. So I had prayed about that, too. Those prayers went something like this:
Please, Lord, don’t let us get another dog. Please, don’t let us get another dog.
Yet, here she was standing on my table. And I began to realize that she isn’t an obstacle to the anything God wants to do in my life. Apparently, the anything He has planned for me includes a very large dog. And I’m reminded that I also ask God regularly to make me more like Him- you know, patient, kind, self-controlled- and let me tell you, Emma was BORN for that job. She wakes up every morning ready to help me out with that. And I did ask God for something big. Good one, Lord!

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