I wrote this reflection a little more than a year ago and thought you might ‘enjoy’ it. By the way, I am fine now and I have a beautiful new Keeshond puppy, Abigail. I am working on my own website and will have it up soon. You can see pictures of Abbie on it.

Yesterday I put down my 17 year old Keeshond, Keesie. I had dreaded the day for months, each morning waking, holding still to hear her steady breathing. Yesterday it was not steady. She was panting, there was a tiny whimper as the relentless California sun rose over the hills. She couldn’t stand. She was telling me it was time. I didn’t want to hear.

I rushed to the vet. My vet, Keesie and I lay on a worn brocade comforter on the floor of the exam room talking it over, saying goodbye. I stroked her soft coat. She was agitated. She sensed my anguish, didn’t know what to do. She always wanted to please.

I have cried for nearly 24 hours, feeling a little ashamed for the intensity of my grief. Keesie was my companion for more than 16 years. Every time I wiped a tear from my eye she licked it from my fingers.

Today I wake without another heartbeat in the house. I go to the park to watch the otters play in the surf, see the dogs. I pat a sheltie, a shnoodle, a terrier mix and a pair of poodles. My hands feel adulterous.

I come into my office, light a candle, sit in my ‘chair of inspiration’ and pick up my Bible. My eyes are raw from crying. It hurts to blink. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” The words drift into my mind, unbidden. Where is that verse? Have I remembered it correctly? I turn to the concordance in the back of my Bible. I look up ‘weeping’. It isn’t there. “What were these people thinking,” I wonder. I look up ‘joy’. Ah, there it is Psalm 30:5.

I open to the page and a ‘clergyman’s (sic) card’ from a funeral I performed in 2004 falls out. “Miss Eleanor,” I smile. She was a ring tailed tooter! Twice in the 130 year history of my church cars were stolen during worship. Both were Cadillacs belonging to Miss Eleanor. I read the names of her children and grandchildren, so many they spill over to the back. I pray for each one, tuck the card into a different page.

Psalm 30 is a song of praise for deliverance, exuberance at having survived. Verse 5: “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” I look up the word for weeping in Hebrew: ‘to cry out, to bend in sorrow’. “Night can last for a long time,” I think. “But joy comes.”

I cannot feel any comfort, so I read the verse again. And a third time. Then I repeat it aloud; try on different voices, my pulpit voice, my comforting others voice, my sore throat voice, my little girl voice. I pray the verse, lingering on the words ‘weeping’ and ‘endure’. Slowly, I move to the promise, ‘but joy comes in the morning.’ Aloud I pray, “But joy comes.” “Joy comes.” “Joy.” Suddenly I feel a huge anger inside me. “When does joy come?” I am aware that my grief is about more than Keesie.

The sun is shining through fat southern looking clouds. There is a strong swell rolling in like the gait of an Old English Sheep Dog. I can hear the waves crashing from my study. I make strong coffee that I drink half and half with milk. I sit in my chair and dropping warm drops of coffee into my vanilla yogurt. I want everything to taste like coffee. I am angry with God. I feel guilty about it, after all Keesie lived a long life. I feel ungrateful but I don’t care.

Over the years I have prayed to be spared from some things, serious illness, unemployment, divorce, having to make the decision to put a pet to sleep among others. These are childish prayers, I know, but they are fervent, bringing whatever is true in my heart to God. As of yesterday I have been spared none of those things.

I decide to walk to the beach. It is a grey day with the promise of long overdue rain. The hills are September brown and it is the end of January. My roses are spotted and shell shocked from a recent frost. Two dolphins loop their way along an invisible pathway, perhaps from Pismo Beach to Avila Bay. I watch them hoping that they will breach and I can see their perpetual grins. Keesie had a grin like that.

Walking back to my house I am in tears again. “You are not the God I wanted,” I rave at the raw sky. My shoulders shudder with the pain of that statement. A shakily edited film of brokenhearted memories spins across my mind…hospital rooms, nurses searching for veins, the bored judge who signed the decree, my depleting bank account, soft silver fur beneath my good-bye saying fingers. I am pouting. “Couldn’t you have spared me just that one? I am finished with you!” I know that I am not, that I am not being fair. I don’t care.

The phone rings. My friend Luanne has food poisoning and wants to know if I can preach for her tomorrow. “Of course,” I say. “Are you sure you aren’t too out of it?” she asks. She is a dog person, too. “Don’t give it another thought,” I say.

I open my file cabinet to search through old sermons. I am drawn to a thin file with just a few notes from 1 Peter. Blah. Blah. Then the text catches my eye. “…for by his wounds you are healed.” I close my eyes and sit with the word for a moment. “By his wounds.” I know the word refers to the welts caused by a beating. I sit quietly with the image. New tears begin to sting my eyes. I know the welts that words can leave and I am sorry that I have railed at God about my pain, forgetting how well Jesus knows human pain. “I’m sorry,” I whisper and we sit together in silence for a moment. I feel Jesus whisper to me, “I may not be the God you wanted, but I’m the only one you’ve got.”

I am sitting in a flimsy hospital gown on a prickly chair with three other people outside the examination room. We are trying not to look at each other’s ridiculous winter white legs. I am wearing black socks with pictures of West Highland White Terriers on them. I have my Bible and a crossword puzzle. I am prepared for anything. Again I think of a Psalm, the most beloved of all Psalms, the 23rd. I open my Bible, not wanting to be ostentatious about my faith, not wanting to seem scared or overly dramatic. My Bible is a NRSV, in my mind I read it in the old King James. “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down….He restoreth my soul…Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for Thou art with me.” I remember learning this Psalm in Sunday School. I broke out into a sweat the day I had to repeat it before my class, even though the class consisted of me, the teacher and one other student who was as scared as I was. I try to picture the teachers face. “Thank you, God, for that teacher.”

I love to read the Scriptures out loud, but this is not the place, so I run my finger over each word, lingering wherever I feel led. Just that touch is my prayer. “Please help me, Lord,” I pray. “I want to live in your house forever, but I don’t want to die just yet.”

The fire is hard to start this morning but I finally get it going. I love getting to church early for my Tuesday prayer and communion group. I am there by 7:30. I feel joy opening the church, lighting the fire, preparing the elements, shifting the chairs nearer the fire on cold mornings. Today there is much ‘mother pain’ as women pray for their children. Some are divorcing, some are addicted, some are looking for work, one is in Iraq. We draw near to one another and nod. I tell them about Keesie, they embrace me with a sigh. I remember of Psalm 56:8 “You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle.” I tell them the ancient custom of collecting tears in a special bottle. Whenever tragedy strikes each mourner brings her bottle and collects a few tears from the others. I can almost see the Spirit gathering our tears into her bottle. As I break the bread and pour the cup, I think of Isaiah 53:3-4 “he was…a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity….Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases.”

The sanctuary is warm. Someone remembered to turn on the heat. “Thank you, God,” I murmur as I switch on the lights. Tonight we are talking about simplicity and trust. The people gather up front, believe it or not. I read to them from Matthew 6. “Do not worry. Seek first the kingdom of God.” I talk too long but the words of Jesus manage to survive my verbiage. On leaving, a woman thanks me. “God used you to help me,” she said. I hug her. I want to cry from gratitude. I think of Paul in prison writing to his friends in Philippi “I thank my God every time I remember you.” (1:3)

I gather my coat around me. It is a clear night and I am standing in it for a while searching for my keys. When I pull into my driveway, I linger for a moment on the lawn. I don’t want to go into the house. For 16 years my first words on entering were “Where’s my Keesie?” I look up at the stars and whisper, “Where’s my Keesie?” The stars seem to move as if to gather me close. They take my breath away. I am reminded of Psalm 8:3-4 “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” Again tears sting my eyes, but they are a little different this time. I walk into the empty house. “Thank you, God, for my years with Keesie, for my life and for the new puppy that you will find for me when night ends and morning comes.”