Right now, our dog Gracie is nursing three healthy, beautiful little yauzers. Or make it's snorkies. I guess we'll have to see if they favor their mother or father before we decide that.
You cannot imagine what I have learned, seen, and felt in the last twelve hours. It feels like it has been days. The panic and excitement both wonderfully and terrifyingly real, still.
I found her first. I had actually been going in my room only to get my camera.
There was this stubborn little leaf bug I was learning a lesson from in my parents' bathroom. You see, I wanted to help get it outside. I'm not much of a bug person, but I figure, well, this little guy isn't much of a people person. That we have in common. I'm not going to hurt it. So I'm assuming it wouldn't hurt me. We have the same Creator. He could work something out.
So for like 15 minutes or so, I had been offering my hand very slowly and offering a folded sheet of paper even more slowly, for it to step on so I could take it outside. But every time I got a little too close for comfort, it would fly away.
Didn't it understand I was only trying to help?
I would hold up a paper, my arm extended up, holding it as still as possible. The little bug took its very sweet time to crawl towards it. Antennas first. Then one leg....
Steps off. Cue big sigh from me.
Repeat. Only this time, three legs, an accidental nudge from my tired arm, and it flies up higher.
Great.
Repeat, other arm. He's coming, coming...coming...All his legs are on there! I slowly, deliberately try to lower the paper. But it freaks him out that he's no longer in control. He flies away.
"Well, If I could just be a little leaf bug and show him it's okay!"
Ohhhhhhh. That's what You did, isn't it God?
No matter how gentle and loving in Your offering you were, we didn't understand You and that scared us. So, you became a man. So that you could feel what we've felt, hurt, know, speak in a way that would not terrify our poor minds. You sent Jesus.
And you've only been trying to get us where we're supposed to be. Where it's better for us.
Just like I was trying to get the bug outside.So I went in the room and smelled before I saw.
"DADDY? Gracie's having her puppies!"
I don't think I reacted as well as I could have at first, but I came around after awhile. Thank God I didn't find what Dad found. She had already had the first three puppies in her new bed, but was now in her box working on a fourth one. How in the world she got from the bed to the box, though they were feet apart,
during labor is beyond me. But I hadn't seen the first three. They were already dead. The vet told us today that when a small dog has so many puppies, the first few are cramped and are usually dead. If a boy, we want to name the forth one
Chaim (hhighm, with a guttural "h" at the front) which is Hebrew for
Life. The fifth one came out and didn't make it either. But at about 10:05ish, two more puppies came. So we have three.
My heart is already drawn to the little one who always cuddles right at Gracie's neck and seems to have a little bit harder time fighting his/her siblings for a place to suckle.
My mom said up until 3:17am with them. Then I took her place and counted my time by "tens". I wrote a fairly long journal entry and would look at the clock on my cellphone. "Okay," I'd say, "only 11 'tens' left."
I watched the sunrise.
Then my dad got up, took them to the vet, and I slept until 11.
Praise God for homeschooling. :)
