You Can Do It!

I am writing this a whole lot earlier than I am used to being up, but I was awoken by a child who couldn't find his blankie and was scared of the dark. This in turn woke up the dog. Yes, the dog. We are in the trial period of adopting a rescue dog. He is the sweetest dog in the world and reminds me of a dog my friend Kathy had, Daisy, except Buddy is real skinny. Well, Buddy (his name was Bullet but being non-NRA members and predominantly passivist, we decided Buddy would be more appropriate), is the most shy and timid dog at this point I have ever met. If he were human, we would say he has low self-esteem. He has always lived in a kennel so does not know what all the sounds of a house or people living in a house are like. He doesn't like to walk through doorways or up steps. Our bedroom is right off of the kitchen at the end of the house and since that is where he sleeps he has to walk through our smaller doorway to get out. This has been a problem. He doesn't want to and ends up being carried out physically by JP. (JP is out walking him right now.) We have been working on getting him to walk through on his own. So I stand on the other side in the kitchen and praise the dickens out of his baby steps. He takes two then paces backwards, then tries again getting a little closer each time to the threshold. He'll stick his nose over and sniff then decide "I'm not so sure about this", then turn around for another pace in our bedroom. All the while, I am at the door saying "come on Buddy, You can do it! Good boy" and petting him everytime he makes a step. This morning I almost gave up, but I didn't and Buddy walked (well ran rather frightful) through the threshold over to the other side.

This got me to thinking about our relationship to God. Yes, we are the dog in this analogy. How many times does God put us in a new situation that we know nothing about. We are nervous and apprehensive. But God is saying to us, "Come on my child, You can do it! See I told you, it would be okay." Our heavenly Father loves us so much and just like we can see the potential in Buddy, He sees our potential as we are obedient to Him. Philippians 4:13 " I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."