Many people find solace in furry friends. I tend to rescue these furry critters. I am richly blessed with quite a few. One of these lovely creatures snuck into a very deep place of my heart. I rescued him almost four years ago. When I found him, he was a four week old kitten with his four siblings. He had been abandoned by his mother in an apartment complex.The kittens had to be bottle fed. Four of them died from complications of immature lungs and pneumonia. Jeremiah was the only one to survive. He would hold his bottle with his paws. He would sleep with me and wrap his paws around my neck. He bonded with me. I became his mother. His keeper.
Later, as he grew, he became one of my greatest comforting companions. He would sit with me. He had to have his time with me and would compete with the other animals to sit with me. He would sit on my chest and wrap his arms around my neck, snuggling his nose into my neck. There were times when he would hug my arm with his paws... squeezing my arm tightly between his paws. He would stay with me if I was sick almost guarding me from any intruder.
Jeremiah was bitten earlier this year by a snake and got an abcess in his rear end. I helped him by cleaning the wound and then took him to the vet. I was the only one he would let near him. He was so thankful that I cleaned his wound that he would sit on my shoulder at night and snuggle his nose into my neck. He had to be with me. We had this connection... it was a special connection. I believe God gave him to me at a time when I needed a special furry friend.
On August 1st of this year, he went missing. We live on two acres in a rural town. There are woods behind my house. Sometimes, there are coyotes who run in the woods. Sometimes there are mountain lions. I don't know what happened, but today, we found my little friend's body on my front lawn. It was so very hard to find him. My dogs have a habit of finding road kill and bringing it up onto the lawn, so I went outside with my oldest son to see what the dogs had brought onto the lawn, but when we went to bag the animal, we realized it was my special friend. Gosh it was sad. So very sad. We immediately took him to bury him in the back yard.
Someone sent me a link today about a Lion's Kiss. It was a segment about a lion who had bonded with his keeper. His keeper had rescued him and taken care of him. Animals respond to love much in the same way that humans respond to love. Love and kindness goes a long way in reaching both animal kingdom and humanity. I have learned so much in taking care of these helpless animals. They are dependent on us to take care of them until they are well enough to get up and run on their own. Then once they are able to run, they want to run independent of us. Although they want to be independent, they are still greatly connected to us and want to be reminded of how much we love them. It is important that we remind them that we love them.
It is the same way with children. When they are infants, they are extremely dependent on us for all of their needs. As they grow, they are developing a level of independence (if we allow them to develop independence). As they reach adolescence, they start to reach for the edge of the nest looking back often to see if Mom and Dad are still there to love them should they fall when they fall out of the nest. Adolescents need a lot of encouragement to not only remain independent, but to also know that they are loved unconditionally, even if they fail.
It is not easy to love a teen who is testing the boundaries of love, yet it is part of their growing up process. Teenagers are learning to identify who they are as they test, argue, debate and challenge. In a loving environment, they can learn to ask questions within a framework that is accepting of these challenges.
I didn't like it when Jeremiah wanted to go out to hunt at night, but I always knew he would come back by morning. This time, he didn't come back. We can't always control what happens in life, but we can control our responses to the things that come our way. We can control our reactions to the challenges. When our teenagers are challenging us as parents, we have a choice. We can look at their challenge as an opposition to our way of doing things, or we can look at what it is they are trying to learn about themselves. Often, the challenge is simply an illustration of the teenagers feeling of being overwhelmed by the demands of this life, or our demands. By simplifying our demands, we can often alleviate the challenges to our way of doing things.
As a Ph.D. learner, I will probably always study the characteristics of how animals relate to us and how children relate to us, as well as how we relate to each other, but I hope in the end, I learn more about the love that occurs when we accept each other fully, love each other fully and look for the reasons as to why we challenge each other.
Christ calls us to love everyone unconditionally with an equal amount of love. It doesn't say anywhere in the scripture (that I can find) that we are to select those who are the best ones to help us get up in the world. It only calls us to love those who are brought across our path. I believe the scripture states very clearly that we are to love those who hate us (Matthew 5:43-47). "If we love those who love us, what reward will you get?"(46a) The scripture puts forth the challenge to us to love our enemies. Love those who may not act exactly as we want them to, think like we want them to, do like we want them to, like us like we want them to, or believe like we want them to. True Christianity means not putting self at the center of your focus, but Christ at the center of your focus. It means putting love as your aim. The goal is to learn to love... and to love all!!
Well, I am getting off my soap box now. I believe that being a good keeper, a good parent, a good friend, a good lover, a good Christian, means that I am willing to love unconditionally, to think the best, to believe in the best, to accept the people who are put in my path (even if they are negative), to love these people to the best of my ability and to care for those for whom I have been given charge. When I am selfless, I can get a good picture of who Christ is within me. If I am focused solely on what my destiny is about, then I am focused too much on me and not enough on Christ and what His goals are. When I stop looking at self and start gazing on the King of Kings, then all those who are entrusted to me become beautiful even with all of their flaws... I can see glory flowing through the cracks because God shines in them. Even the animals have God's Spirit flowing in their veins. He is the beginning of all and the ending of all.
We are called to love first... if we spend our time loving, we will end up having fulfilled our destiny and at the end of our lives, we can look back and say that we reached the goal.
With love,
RamyB
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