Glorious Crash

I ran over my dog with a snowboard.

It snowed last week in Seattle, and the only good thing about being house bound for a week is that we live on a hill. So in addition to the snow fort and the snowmen and the snowball fights, we were sledding and snowboarding on the hill in front of our house. It took about 8 minutes to hike to the very top, but if you did that, and got enough speed to clear the flat parts, you could get a really nice, long, snowboard run in for free. To me, that’s called a win/win. My kids were having a blast all week, but my dog, Scout, was going out of his doggy mind with joy. He loves the snow. He eats it. He rolls around in it. But mostly he loves running in it. So I would take him with me as I hiked to the top of the hill, and he would run behind me as I snowboarded down, sort of herding me ahead of him, and no matter how many runs we made, he was always game for another one. Oh, and he slept really good that week, too.

On Friday, we had the last day of snow before the great melt. And so we were all pushing to get our final runs in, and Scout was running after the kids sledding on the hill, and it was the typical chaos and laughter. So I took one last snowboard run, and Scout rushed at my heels, barking, joyfully herding me…toward a tree that had fallen over in the night. Not wanting to impale myself, I slowed, and tried to cut a path behind Scout. But the slowing startled Scout, and he jumped backwards, right into my snowboard. We collided. He yelped. From the sound he made, I could tell that he was hurt. Of course, my first emotional response was annoyance. Dumb dog. But then I saw the wound…where the edge of my snowboard cut the back of his forepaw. Deep. It looked like a whole chunk of his leg was missing. I immediately sat next to Scout and kept firm, steady pressure on his wound, and prevented him from bleeding out. Jodie got the car. We used a sled to transport him to the vet. They put him in emergency surgery. Now he’s in his third cast, with three tendons repaired, and muscle re-attached, and stitches holding the whole thing together. I’m hoping PETA doesn’t show up.

Overall, he’s doing fine.
Maybe too fine.

We need to keep him calm and slow and not bounding around and not chewing his cast and it is a challenge. Because he feels fine now, and he’s a high energy dog. And so we’re giving him doggy narcotic, and doggy sedative, and I’m mixing him doggy Nyquil cocktails…but he’s still a bounder and a jumper and a crazy “I want to run everywhere” kind of dog. Which means that he doesn’t know what’s good for him.

And I've been thinking that in these regards he’s a little bit like you and me.
We chase after things that are dangerous. Things that could wound us.
We injure ourselves in these pursuits.
And even after God bandages us up, and puts us back together, and gets us on the road to recovery, we’re still bounding, eagerly tearing around, wanting to engage in the same activities that got us into the mess in the first place.

You're a mess. So am I. Praying that you allow God's glory to shine through your mess this week...