Fear.

My parents recently adopted two Springer Spaniels last fall.  They are beautiful dogs, and after our Beagle died three years ago, my whole family was itching for new members.  I think it was an attempt to ease the pain of a move that my sisters would have to endure, and it worked a little.  Plus, my parents have something to keep them busy once the twins move out of the house in a couple of years.  That's my thought anyway.  But they seriously are like my parents new children.

The sad part is that they were abused as puppies, and our guess is that they were puppy mill dogs.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppy_mill)  They are originally from Missouri (found frollicking around in the wild), and a friend of mine was fostering them when my mom ran into her at the grocery store.  One thing led to another, and I came home from school to find these two adopted puppies in our house.  My sisters named them Avery and Louise - one is black, and one is brown. 

Because they weren't trained (or taken care of for that matter) at a young age, they have a lot of...well, issues.  Specifically with submission - Louise's response to fear & submission is just to pee.  If you go up to her without her coming to you first, she'll pee immediately.  Avery on the other hand, she bites.  She's so afraid of people that she will (try to) bite them in complete and utter fear.  This is a huge issue in our household right now because we love her, we don't want them to be separated, we thought we could train her not to bite, but we can't have a biting dog in our house.  I'm so sad because I've just fallen in love with her - she's such a cool dog once she's relaxed, and she feels safe.

Tonight, she lunged at someone that was dropping off dinner, and that was the "last straw" for my mom.  She loves having people over, and she has a huge heart for serving others - it's too much of a burden for her to carry all of the time.  My dad immediately corrected her behavior, and she laid down in her bed.  If dogs could cry, she would have been crying.  You could tell in her posture that she was ashamed; the way that she was hiding under a footrest showed that she knew she had done something wrong.  My parents have no idea what to do because training is really, really expensive - about the same as my bedside toilet that I need to survive, but the insurance company disagrees.  Pray for us because we don't know what to do next.

I think that sometimes I respond the same way as Avery.  For example, I am really fearful of what my legs look like underneath my casts.  I haven't seen my legs since before I fell off of the rock climbing wall - I wouldn't look at them the entire night or morning.  When people told me I should, I just geeked out, and was like, "No! I'm not looking at them.  Are you serious!?"  Now I'm afraid to look at them because they're all cut up.  Pretty soon they will atrophy and I won't even have any leggies left.  Now, I'm not discouraged by any of this; I think it's funny.  I'm going to have legs the size of baseball bats!  Come on, that's funny. But I will NOT look at them until I absolutely have to, and I get snappy when pushed.

Seriously though, I am especially afraid of what the future holds, especially concerning my career.  I've been struggling for quite some time with what I'm "supposed to be doing", and I still am afraid of what I should do next. 

Like my beautiful dog, I sometimes get defensive when people ask me what I'm doing these days.  I have no reason to, but I just put up this distant front, and answer very minimally, sort of sharking around the question.  I think I've hurt quite a few people's feelings in the last year - people who have been praying for me, and wishing the best for me...they honestly want to know how I'm doing.  I just feel like I've failed in so many ways.  Because I have.  Failure is a part of life, but failure makes me deeply, deeply afraid.  It is one of the great fears in my life.  I don't like admitting that to people.

Fear of failure is also very stupid because it's a fact of life.  I need to just learn from my failure, and not run and hide under the footrest and cry.  But that's what I do.  When I fail, I beat myself up and I talk myself down, and I run in circles which perpetuates more failure and negative thinking. 

Philippians 4:12-13 says, "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”

This is a verse that is quoted quite often, right?  "I can do everything through him who gives me strength."  When I first started going to church, and heard this verse, I thought, "Whoa.  I could do anything."  In 11-year-old terms, I think I went immediately to flying or jumping from a cliff or eating more candy that any human ever has...stuff that is selfishly based, and would "test" whether or not God was real.  (And I think I'm still tempted to do that.  Just to clarify though, I did not fall off of a rock climbing wall to test God... : )

I think what Paul is really talking about is the verse right before that - "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want..."  When we make choices, life happens.  Our choice is ours alone - we should aim to please God & serve him, worship him, love him, and strive to live like him.  

It's not about the end result though; it's about the process.  We should be content with what we have in any situation - with the ability to walk or not, subbing in schools or working my dream job, with our worn-out couches or our new ones, whether you know where you next meal is coming from or not, with our laptops that work slow or a brand-new computer that you found online, with our snow boots from last year or ones that God blesses us with because we have compassionate Grandmas who don't want us to slip on ice from Antartica that magically appears in front of our apartments.  You know what I mean, right?  Content in everything.  My prayer is that we are not afraid of what other people think of us, but that we can be ourselves, be in the moment, be who God is shaping us to be, and not fear the refining process.