“Please call me asap. Your dog is at my house.”
I got that text at 6:00 a.m. “Oh, no she’s not!” I thought. “She’s asleep in her comfortable suite in my backyard workshop, where she has A/C and heat, and gets her food—a precise mixture of dry & canned food, topped by two wieners (her current preference)—delivered each evening via room service (me).”
Besides that I had repaired the place where she dug under the fence and escaped during the last thunderstorm.
You see, she’s not just pampered with her room and board; she’s scared to death of thunder. She’s 12 years old and deaf as a post, but she can hear (or feel) it thunder and then she morphs into a 75 pound chicken who, in her terror, doesn’t understand that her warm place is also a safe place! Do you have any idea what a terrified Golden Retriever can do to a chain link fence? I have spent 12 years doing fence repairs and can show you photos.
When I heard the first boom of thunder at 2:00 a.m. a few nights earlier, I got up and went out to close the door so she would feel safe. She was already gone. Knowing there was nothing I could do at 2:00, I went back to bed until daylight and then drove the neighborhood for 45 minutes to no avail. I came home and posted her photo and my phone number on Facebook. Three hours later, I got a call from a home just down the road. She was asleep on their front porch.
So, now you know how this other person got my number and why she thought the dog asleep on her front porch must be mine. So, before calling “asap,” I went out to check the warm place. No dog. Only a big black cat that apparently had come through the “potty break” door.
So, we are not only afraid of thunder, we are afraid of cats? Seriously? Cats who weigh less than 10 pounds? In the words of favorite daughter, “Dog up, retriever!”
So, I went and met a neighbor down the street in the other direction. Back in the warm place, we had a chat about how she is a DOG and cats are supposed to fear HER. And then when the sun came up, I did more fence repair and thought about how unreasonable it is to leave a safe warm place inside and run panicked out into the big bad world. But, I guess when you’re scared, it’s hard to make good decisions.
Maybe that’s why the Bible says, “Fear not” 63 times. Perhaps the most well-known is when an angel appeared to a group of shepherds on a Judean hillside and announced the birth of a baby in Bethlehem (Luke 2:10-11). Our lives matter so much to God that He doesn’t want us making bad decisions out of fear. He wants us to know His presence (Matthew 1:22-23).
Seriously.
Question: How has fear caused you to make bad decisions?
Leave a comment below. I’d love to hear your perspective.
