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Part 02 - Losing Mickey

10/14/2008 7:20:49 AM

(When I first put this entry on the website, my husband—who is my favorite critique source, gently pointed out that I hadn’t told Mickey’s story.  I hadn’t shared how wonderful she was and how she fitted into our lives.  So I pulled this journal entry and its reflection off the website temporarily, and told the story of Mickey (Reflection 4).)

This entry is about the unexpected loss of my dog Mickey.  We went out of town to a family funeral and Mickey’s ‘grandparents’ were away.  We needed to find someone else who could keep her for two nights.  The daughter of good friends, also a pet owner, agreed to keep her.  Upon our return, we discovered Mickey was gone.  Because her identification tags were noisy when she scratched, this person had removed her collar.  Although many people helped us search, we never saw her again.

Journal Entry

The loss of Mickey has hit me hard.  So hard I can’t seem to get beyond it.  I’ve been depressed, and not even a new dog can take her place or ease my pain.  It’s Mickey I want; not just a dog.

Something has been eating away at me:  I have been so angry at God!  The number one, bottom line feeling I have is that ‘it’s not fair!’  God’s not playing by the rules.  Usually if we just pray and trust him, things turn out okay.  We did nothing to deserve this and we left it in God’s hands.  Now why hasn’t he brought Mickey back to me?

You’ve hurt me badly this time, Lord.  You hit really close to home.  And you’re not making it any better.

So what does it mean to live in a world without rules?  Did I really believe I had figured out a method for manipulating God?  The serene ‘your will be done’—did I mean it or was it just a way of getting what I wanted?  Of covering all my bases?

So, if there are no rules, what’s left?  Just God.  Just total trust and reliance on a God we can’t control.  But why doesn’t that make me feel better?  Why does that feeling come through as ‘can’t rely on, can’t count on?’  If I can only trust God when I control him, that’s not trust.  Didn’t I ask God to deepen my trust?  I guess that only happens when all the supports are kicked away, when there’s nothing left to lean on or rely on except God himself.

So, what depresses me?  I still find no joy.  There’s something more...something more.  I’m so tired.  I’m still hanging onto this old way of believing I know how God’s going to act.  If I’m a good little girl, things should work out.  Right now, I feel like a kid kicking everything in sight:  ‘Great, that’s just great.  So what am I supposed to do?  This stinks.  Life stinks, and sometimes I’m not so sure about God.’

I got a card from ----, and she’d written on it ‘Jeremiah 29:11.’  Do I really believe that?  That God has plans for my welfare, and not for harm?  WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF MY PAIN?

I really thought I meant it when I told God he could take everything and I’d still be okay because I have him.  What has Mickey’s loss done to me?  I just don’t feel like myself.  Or is the problem that I still haven’t accepted her loss?  I keep her bowl, her paper, everything, just in case.

I really haven’t said goodbye.  I really haven’t let her go.  To say goodbye means she is irretrievably gone—forever.  But I have to—bury her papers with the St. Francis medal I gave her at the Blessing of the Animals, and give the rest to the Humane Society.  And let her go.

Grieving a loss is natural and good, but I realized my grief over Mickey wasn’t diminishing with time.  I was focused on her, my life centered on finding her, and it was affecting my well-being.  Every free minute was spent walking around the town, calling for her.  People in the congregation were looking, mail carriers were looking, people that I met as I walked promised to look for her.  As the weeks passed, I continued to walk and cry, looking for the dog I thought I needed in order to be happy with life.

What I was actually doing was resisting grieving, because in order to genuinely grieve, you must first accept the loss.  I couldn’t accept Mickey’s loss because it raised questions for me about God’s character.  What kind of a God allows such things to happen to people who are being faithful?

I hadn’t realized it, but I carried within me the belief that God (and life) worked according to a certain set of rules.  If I did this for God, then God should do this for me.  This was part of a set of unquestioned principles that ordered my world and made it safe and livable.

That world was crumbling, disintegrating.  Mickey’s loss enraged and frightened me because it didn’t fit into how I had structured (or built) my picture of reality.  I was dedicating my life to God.  Surely that meant God should be dedicated to protecting me from hurt.

Had I not already been in the process of growing, this reaction probably wouldn’t have happened, or it wouldn’t have been as intense.  I would have grieved her loss and gotten on with life without it impacting my faith and world as it did.  I would have comforted myself with thoughts like ‘everyone suffers, but I know God is with me,’ or ‘others have it worse than I do.’  I would have explained away my anger and doubts.  But I wouldn’t have felt as though someone had pulled the rug out from under me:  as if I was thrown off-balance, my whole world shaken.

That’s what told me that losing Mickey had the potential to help me grow if I could embrace the pain and the doubt it raised, and keep on going until I understood a little better what was happening to me.  It was hard; I didn’t want to let go of the anger.  It kept the pain at bay.  But it served no other purpose that I could see.

Finally one night, I was given a dream.  In it, my close friend was dragging a large wooden platform by a rope.  The platform was filled with dogs.  She drug it through the grass and mud into a large fenced in area where I stood in pasture.  The dogs all got off and I surveyed them.  Mickey wasn’t there.  Dejected, my friend turned around and began pulling the empty platform back out to continue her search.  The field where I stood was crowded with dogs.

My friend has always been physically strong.  I realized when I examined this dream that the focus on finding Mickey was draining me physically and spiritually.  I accepted her loss at that moment of teaching, but felt as though a knife had pierced my heart.

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