God Gave Us Ash

Last week I shared about the fear I felt and to some extent continue to feel after the loss of Oliver. Ultimately, all of these feelings of fear I had needed to be felt. Fear was a natural response to the trauma I had experienced. Somehow my fear needed to be felt in a way that was not destructive to myself and those closest to me. I believe to help with these feelings, God gave us our dog, Ash.

When we moved to eastern Washington about a year after Oliver died, we started to look for a dog at the animal shelters near us. My husband and I prayed nightly with my daughter for God to bring a dog into our lives to love. We visited two dogs in the first couple of weeks of looking and called about several others, but none of them were the right fit. Then we halted our search for a short time as we had a vacation coming up. Our vacation was unexpectedly canceled because of widespread wildfire smoke in our area, the area we were supposed to travel to, and everywhere within driving distance of our house. It was during this time when we were supposed to be gone on vacation that Ash showed up as a stray at an animal shelter near us. He was friendly, impossibly cute, and just the size we were looking for. He was also a little nervous, as if he too knew that bad things could happen. 

We brought him home and my daughter named him Ash for the ashes that fell from the sky that kept us from being gone on vacation while he was brought to the shelter and for the black coloring on his back. It was love at first sight for my husband and daughter. It was faith building for all of us to have prayed and then watched God answer our prayers. But I had been nervous throughout our search. I just didn't think that anything good could happen for us anymore, and I was worried about all the ways adopting a dog could turn into a disaster. My fears continued to bloom as we brought him home, and they continued to grow on and off over the next couple of years even though in reality the adoption was going really well.

Although it is a little embarrassing to write about how anxious I got (and still sometimes am) about a dog who I love and who is in my daughter's words "the best dog ever", I know that God used this situation. My fears were going to go somewhere, and it was way healthier for my family for them to go towards our dog. Especially a dog who provided comfort even as I was worrying about him! I wish I had a magic bullet to share that makes all fear go away. Instead I learned to walk with my fear and to trust God to see me through my fear one day at a time.