Well the sun has come out the last few days, so I am a happier camper. I have used this week to network with other counselors and pastors. Some of them may become referral services when I start a counseling practice in this area.
Tomorrow, is the first meeting of the Sacramento Area Pet Therapy meetup group. I started it on-line. We now have over 22 members and 12 of us are meeting for the first time. If you want to see where we are going with it click here....
If you want to know what helped lead up to starting a group like this then read on.
This article I wrote awhile back. I call it "Doggone Theology".
When I was a child I wanted to be a pastor when I grew up. Our family went to church 3-4 times a week. It was my extended family. In fact, I lived the first 6 years of my life upstairs from the church we attended. In those days the tax law said all real property under the same roof as the church was tax free in Chicago where I grew up.Therefore, many churches had houses or apartments connected to the church building in order to avoid taxation on the church parsonage.
The first man I remembered wanting to be like, was the pastor of the church, who lived downstairs. He died, when I was 9 years old. I still think he has a strong influence on my life to this day.
When I graduated from High School, I went to a Bible College to become a pastor. I dropped out and joined the army during the Vietnam War. Four years later I went back and finished my seminary education.I was a pastor in four churches over a 12 year period.
Some say I was successful. However, I was depressed and miserable. Today I am not a member or regular attender of "church". I consider much of the form and practices of regular church goers at best insignificant. I tried over the past 7 years to visit a plethora of churches. Each time I did, I went away often thinking “that was a waste of time”. Many times I left feeling depressed or disgusted.
Yet, I consider myself a deeply spiritual man and a Christian elder. Today, I claim to know a lot less about God, then I thought I did when I was a pastor. In fact one of the few things I know for sure is that I am loved by God.
It took two dogs to really teach me that concept. Yep, I will explain my new “dog gone” theology, but first a little more background.
In 2002 after 12 years of being a pastor and then 10 years of being a psychotherapist and professor, I quit everything, bought an RV and traveled for most of the year with my wife, wondering what we were going to do for the rest of our lives.
Over the past 22 years I lost most of my money to a bad business deal, was cheated out of our life savings by my best friend, and had a business partner swindle me out of my half of a business. We had raised and launched two great kids to adulthood.
I had helped a lot of people, but I felt burnt-out, overstressed and wanted to isolate myself from everyone, but my personal family.After a year traveling all over the U.S. in our RV my wife Caren found a highly significant career in the health care field as the program manager of a large outpatient hospital program.
I taught part-time at a community college and began a mentoring program where I volunteered for a year helping people, who wanted to begin a computer consulting business. Many of them have their own business today because of that mentoring program.After the RV trip, even though I did the mentoring program, which was primarily skills based, the people helping part of me, and the “God sensitive” part of me felt like a void.”
My depression was again very strong in my life and my emotions felt frozen.Then Caren came home with a little dog named Pokey, that became my best friend, for the next two years. Every time I came home, he was genuinely thrilled to see me.When I was depressed, he could cheer me up with his acceptance and his devotion to me. He and I traveled in our RV to many places. There was really no place I went for those two years that he didn’t go. He waited in the RV, or in the car for me, when I went into some place, he was not allowed.
Then at the end of January, of this year, I helped our daughter and son-in-law move to Sacramento, by taking care of their two dogs for three weeks at our home. Then Pokey, and I went to their new home, to help them move in.
That evening as we walked to the RV, Pokey who always walked by my side, suddenly ran into the street and was hit by a speeding car, who didn’t even stop.
I found myself lying over his lifeless body in the middle of the street wailing and unable to even move. When I could move I lifted his lifeless body, to the side of the street, and knelt over him crying and sobbing uncontrollably.
Then, after confirming his death, I drove the RV 600 miles home crying and sobbing almost the entire way. (From midnight to 9 a.m.)I don’t know how I even was able to see much of the time, let alone drive that distance.
My great wife Caren stayed on the phone with me the whole time and was the reason I had to drive that distance. I had to be with her, and she needed me.We comforted each other the entire weekend and spent much of it crying and remembering Pokey.
A couple of friends called concerned for me and even told me they were thinking of giving me their dog. Even though that was huge and genuine for them, I didn’t want another dog, I wanted Pokey! I thought I would never have another dog. He was more like a friend then a dog to me.
My good friend Gary and I use to talk about theology, God, and life and I often told him Pokey taught me more about grace and unconditional love, then all the church attendance, years of theological training, and hundreds of books on the subject, I have read.
He simply loved me, regardless of how I felt, or what I had accomplished that day. I was the most important thing in his life when he saw me. That to me was what God’s love and “church” was supposed to be about. I had learned the greatest message about God from a dog!
This two year lesson was just the beginning of my new theology……
For the next couple of weeks after Pokey’s death I moped around the house playing a little on-line poker and not doing much else. Every time I went to sleep, I saw in my mind the tragic scene of his death.
For the next couple of weeks after Pokey’s death I moped around the house playing a little on-line poker and not doing much else. Every time I went to sleep, I saw in my mind the tragic scene of his death.
During those weeks I gained an even greater compassion for our military men and women who face issues of post traumatic stress disorder, and I marveled at the healing power that enable parents who lost children to heal and continue on with life.
One of our best friends Jane had her 90 year old mother stay with her for a week with her “mom’s” two dogs. One of them was especially mean to their new little puppy Coco. Coco also had a disgusting habit of eating feces, hers and other dogs. She became very sick with vomiting and was unable to keep food down from something she must have caught from one of the other dogs.
I volunteered to watch Coco for the rest of the time Jane’s mother was visiting and to nurse Coco back to health. I took her to the Vet and made her a special diet to help combat her stomach disorder. Coco loved me and I found myself being comforted by her. She had known Pokey, and had visited for a few days back in December, when I was taking care of my daughters two dog.
Whenever, I cried remembering Pokey, Coco would lick my face. I discovered it is impossible to cry in grief, and laugh at the same time. I use to say to her "did Pokey tell you to do that”?
One day Jane’s husband Gary opened the door at my home and Coco ran out. She began running down the alley toward a busy street. We called her, and she only ran faster down the alley right toward a street with a blind corner and many cars. I was sick inside, and saw in my mind Pokey’s death and couldn’t believe I was going to witness another one.
At the last moment she veered to the left onto the sidewalk without crossing the street and stopped and came back to me. I picked her up, crying and holding her to my chest. She was unaware of the trauma and tragedy that had just been avoided.She needed to stay a few more days to finish her medications and her special diet. I wanted her to stay forever, but she wasn’t our dog, and Jane’s 5 year old granddaughter had a special relationship with her.
I didn’t know it at the time but Jane’s granddaughter, her, and Gary had been talking about my loss with Pokey and how it had affected me.The day before Coco was to go back to her home, Jane called and talked to my wife Caren.
Later that day when I called home to let Caren know I was on the way home, she told me there was a surprise for me when I got home.When I asked her what it was? She told me Jane and Gary had given me Coco. I could hardly believe it!
Beside this being an expensive little dog, there were many, many, reasons why this would be a very difficult decision for Jane to make.
I rushed home and cried again with Coco, but this time my tears were mainly tears of happiness.
She licked them and made me laugh just the same.
Now the theological moral of the story, I have never been much of an emotional person. I didn’t cry at my own father’s death or the deaths of guys I knew in the service, when I was in a hostile fire zone and they were killed.
The last few years my spiritual sensitivity and my emotions had seemed frozen. Pokey was a gift from God, that taught me about unconditional love and acceptance. Coco was a clear lesson to me about what Grace really means.
Grace is provision. A provision that is not earned. It is paid for by someone else.
It is purely a gift, given out of unconditional love.
God loved me enough to give me the capacity to love a little dog named Pokey, and gave that dog the capacity to teach me a great theological fact.
That truth that I am loved and accepted unconditionally!
Then God used another little dog to teach me that he will provide for me, purely out of His love for me. That provision was neither earned, nor accomplished by my efforts. It is simply what God does for us.
My hope for you, is that you know, or come to know, that unconditional love, grace that is relevant for all your loss or fears.
Those are two of the greatest theological lessons I recently learned, taught to me by two little dogs.
