Sandy, our sweet 4-year-old Yugoslavian Mountain Dog has had a rough year. Starting with an emergency vet visit on New Year’s Day, and including 2 emergency surgeries and numerous complications, she has been fighting to live for 17 days now. This 112-pound ball of love and fluff has been such a huge investment of my time since she got here spring of 2017. I had no idea how to raise a great big strong-willed dog. Boy did I have a lot to learn! She has been a great teacher and an even better friend. I truly cannot imagine coming home without her here to welcome me with her whole body tail wag! I can’t imagine not having the feeling of comfort and safety I get knowing she is “on duty” around here. But this week the reality of that possibility has been all too close.

Over time I have come to believe that my life proceeds from one experience to the next, exactly as it is meant to. Things happen. I show up, or I don’t. In every instance, there is some amount of wisdom available to be gleaned from each individual experience, should I choose to accept it. Sorta like in a video game, there are “gifts” players can take if they choose to find and take them. It feels to me that the most valuable gifts in this human experience are in the form of love and wisdom. And it is 100% my choice whether to accept each gift as it comes. When “life happens”, do I take the moments I need and step out of my emoting and focused problem-solving long enough to just “be” with whatever just happened? Do I search for the gems of wisdom available during each obstacle? Do I replace my frustration with love? I do try to constantly deepen into acceptance.

In this particular situation, I am having a difficult time putting my intense personal desire to have my canine companion live a long and healthy life, in perspective with my intention to allow life to simply unfold before me. My urge is to beg and plead with God.

I came across this poem by Rumi just now, and it makes so much more sense to me today than it did when I read it just a few months ago.  

Love is reckless, not reason.

Reason seeks a profit.

Love comes on strong, consuming herself, unabashed.

Yet, in the midst of suffering,

Love proceeds like a millstone,

hard-surfaced and straightforward.

Having died to self interest,

she risks everything and asks for nothing.

Love gambles away every gift God bestows.

Without cause God gave us Being;

without cause, give it back again.

Gambling yourself away is beyond any religion.

Religion seeks grace and favour,

but those who gamble these away are God’s favourites,

for they neither put God to the test

nor knock at the door of gain and loss'

[Mathnawi VI 1967-74, translated by Kabir Helminski, The Pocket Rumi]