The Liturgy of Sweeping Dog Hair
While sweeping up dog hair, I start thinking about my friends’ dogs. One has a Goldendoodle and the other has an Airdale Terrier. Their dogs don’t shed. I sweep up dog hair up daily - or should sweep up dog hair daily. Sometimes the size of the piles reveals the truth that I’ve skipped a few days. Staying at home during a pandemic, I can’t avoid noticing it collecting in the corners and under the chests and on the rugs.
While I’m sweeping, I envision my friends with the non-shedding breeds doing fun things - baking cookies or sitting outside in the sunshine watching children play. I am sweeping dog hair …and not just today but almost every day. What all else are they doing while I sweep dog hair?
Why did I pick a German Shepherd? I silently asked myself.
And then I remember: I didn’t pick a German Shepherd.
This is what You gave me.
That friend at the salon. The picture of the huge black dog on her phone who needed a home. The desperate need I had at that time. Grizzly came to me. (There’s a whole story here if you haven’t read it.)
This is what You gave me.
It was one of those internal thoughts that echoes inside my head. I knew it was a prayer, of relinquishment, though not gratitude, while I raked a pile of hair into the dust pan. I need to etch that sentence -This is what You gave me - in stone or at least write it on rocks with Sharpies and place those memorials around my house. I can think of about 1,000 things in my life I want to complain about right now and and wish were different, had another outcome, a different value attached, or were just a more interesting flavor. I could blame this state of mind on stay-at-home orders and COVID-19. We are all struggling with contentment right now, but the truth is that the current situation is only revealing what is underneath all the noise and stuff and movement of my former life.
Am I coveting a non-shedding dog? An Airedale Terrier or a Goldendoodle?
I’ve got a non-shedding breed, Wally, the miniature Schnauzer. But with Grizzly in the house, it hardly matters that Wally doesn’t shed.
The solitude and silence of sweeping reveal my desire for ease and comfort, my denial of cost and consequence, my resistance to menial chores, my self-pity, my FOMO, my envy. Though I want gratitude to be my default mode, it isn’t yet.
This is what you gave me.
A working dog that sheds!
While I continue to sweep up his hair, in the quiet repetitive motion of the quotidian task, I remember God’s kindness in the winter of 2018, my own deep need, and His provision for it - a German Shepherd. A prayer of thanksgiving bubbles up. Then I realize I’m composing this blog post in my head. I remember my readers whom I love and that writing is an act of worship for me and the thousands of words I’ve written about Grizzly and sweeping this dog hair has led to all that. My heart is unlatched. Sweeping dog hair has become liturgy - the work of the people - ushering me into thanksgiving, able to see the beauty and the value in what I have been given.
This is what you gave me.
In the last two years, God has used Grizzly in transforming my life. Could he have done that with a Goldendoodle or an Airedale Terrier? I don’t know. It seems I needed a herding dog in this season of my life. I needed a shepherd, a protector, and apparently a shedder.
