No, this isn’t a post about THAT television show in a different location. I only saw LOST a couple of times a few years ago. I was never able to get into it. Now give me some NCIS or some Chuck and I’m all over it!! But LOST has always been lost on me!
Anyway . . . this post is about my dog getting lost in the dog park. Well, actually it’s about getting separated . . . from my dog . . . at a dog park. Now my dog will tell you that I’m the one that got lost. But that’s just her insecurity and embarrassment about the whole ordeal doing the talking. And I wouldn’t listen to it if I were you.
It was my first experience at a dog park and I thought I was doing pretty well. We were three quarters of the way around the entire circular path and I thought we were home free. Then we met a group of people and dogs that we had already met on our way up the first half of the trail. They were walking in the opposite direction from us. So we stopped and ‘chatted’ and ‘sniffed’ and I slowly started meandering in the direction we were heading . . . believing that Mel would soon leave her ‘friends’ and rejoin me. After a minute, I decided to retrieve her. However, when I reached the ridge and looked down at the group, Mel was nowhere to be seen!
I looked further down the path that we had just traveled and she wasn’t there either. I called her name, but to no avail. So I ran across the middle, up the hill toward the other side of the dog park . . . where we had started our journey. When I reached the summit, I saw Mel . . . running as fast as she could along the trail in the opposite direction of the way we had originally traveled it.
I was able to cut her off before she ran all the way to the gate. She was VERY happy to see me! And needless to say, she stayed close to my side as we continued on to the gate and went home.
It was very traumatic for her . . . and for ME. It’s not a big dog park and she doesn’t have a lot of stamina. So I’m sure if I had continued on the path toward the gate, Mel would probably have been sitting there waiting for me, ready to go home and rest. But I didn’t want her wandering around by herself, running up to everyone she saw thinking it might be me. I also didn’t want her to think for a minute that I had left her. I wanted to be sure she was okay. She was my responsibility.
I was thinking about that experience a few days later and it reminded me of something else. It reminded me of ME . . . and my relationship with God. Only I’m Mel.
It reminded me of how easy it is for me to sometimes get ‘off track’. To get distracted by people I meet on the path and to get involved with them and to get completely turned around and headed in another direction. Pretty soon I’m not able to find my way back. And I can’t hear God’s voice.
It would be so simple to just turn around and head in the direction I was going. God would be right there waiting for me to rejoin Him. But sometimes when I get involved in conversations and activities and game-playing, I get turned around and I’m not sure where I was and how to get back there.
And sometimes . . . like Mel . . . when I realize that I’ve lost my way, I panic. And I start running as hard as I can BACKWARDS! Searching desperately for Him. Back down the path . . . one I’ve traveled in the past . . . where I KNOW for a fact we were walking together.
And always . . . like I did with Mel . . . God crosses the terrain between us, goes however far is needed and does whatever it takes to meet me where I am. To be sure “I find Him.”
And just like Mel was so relieved when she heard me call her name and when she recognized me on the path . . . I am always very relieved when I hear God call my name again and when I recognize that He’s there . . . on my path . . . wherever I find myself desperately seeking Him.
Even if it happens to be in a dog park!