Good morning…
Yesterday, as I drove to the vet with our six month old puppy, a tiny dream of mine died. Honestly, I have always wondered if I would whelp at least one litter of puppies in my lifetime. In awe of the cyclical nature of life, I have thought that helping my dog to give birth to more dogs would be a crazy, cool experience. Yet, when the opportunity rested securely on my lap, I consciously let my tiny dream die. Cami was spayed by noon, and tonight she sleeps at the vet for observation.
No litter of puppies will be born into our home. That is my honest truth. As a longstanding dream dies, it feels right to acknowledge my hint of sadness.
This choice reminds me of when I researched how grapes grow best in a vineyard, as I co-wrote a year-long Sunday School curriculum entitled “Grow Juicy Fruit” in 2006. When a big cluster of grapes is ripening on a vine, the vinedresser regularly goes through the vineyard and plucks off some of the perfectly good grapes, letting them die. This thinning out process gives the grapes which remain an opportunity to receive more space, more sunshine, more nutrients. The hope is that the remaining grapes will grow more lush, more healthy, more delicious, precisely because some good grapes are discarded.
Whelping a litter of puppies with Cami is a perfectly good grape I have prayed through and plucked off, letting the idea die. If grapes represent the large cluster of gifts ripening in my life as a woman who is nearing sixty-three years old, only God knows the abundant growth this thinning out process will invite.
Thus You grow grain for bread, grapes for wine, grass for cattle— all of this for us. And so we have bread to make our bodies strong, wine to make our hearts happy, oil to make our faces shine. Every good thing we need, Your earth provides; our faces grow flush with Your life in them (Psalm 104:14-15, VOICE).
…Sue…
