For the love of a dog, and the love of a sister

With tears streaming down my cheeks I eek this out for my sister and her fox dog, Sophie.

Sophie died last night. My sister fed her ice chips, gave her pain meds, and stroked her fuzzy, silvery-black fur, until she finally passed out in the wee hours of the morning. What a good momma. When she awoke, Sophie was gone. Her little body, lifeless.

Death is so unnatural.  I know it happens every second of every day.


But it’s not what we’re made for. We were created to live forever.

However, long ago humanity made a foolish choice and experienced a rift so deep that it rent our hearts.


Until He came.


Jesus. The mocker of death. The mender of hearts.


For those of us who follow Jesus, we feel the tension of death and resurrection.


We still experience death. A time when the person (one with personality – dogs, horses, dolphins, people) we love is no longer present with us in our reality on earth. Yet she exists in another time and space, happy, healthy, and whole. So, we have hope that one day we’ll meet again – face to face, face to muzzle, (or muzzle to foot for Sophie!).


While we wait for that day, we grieve. We weep. He weeps with us. We tell stories of our beloved. He listens, smiling as we remember. We cling to the truth that our hearts cry out – we were made for so much more.


For me, the picture that C.S. Lewis paints in The Last Battle of what is and what will be resonates deep in my soul. (Here are some snippets particularly for those of us who love dogs, but I encourage everyone to please read the whole septology if you haven’t…it will do your soul good!)


“The Dogs were still with them. They joined in the conversation but not much because they were too busy racing on ahead and racing back and rushing off to sniff at smells in the grass til they made themselves sneeze. Suddenly they picked up a scent which seemed to excite them very much.”


“But the Dogs barked, “Faster, faster!”


“What looked funniest was the Dogs. During the gallop they had not been at all out of breath, but now, as they swarmed and wriggled upwards there was plenty of spluttering and sneezing among them: that was because they would keep on barking, and every time they barked they got their mouths and noses full of water.”


“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now….Come further up, come further in!”


“There was a real railway accident,” said Aslan softly. “Your father and mother and all of you are – as you used to call it in the Shadowlands – dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”

 When the morning comes at last and the shadowlands are set, we’ll meet again little fox dog. Until then, go “Further up and further in!”



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All is grace indeed

We couldn’t be more different she and I.


She has six kids, homeschooling them and oh, she’s writing books - a best seller even.


I have two little ones, find a few words every few weeks, and can’t keep the dishes washed or the laundry clean most of the time.

She lives on a farm in a place where cold is a part of life most of the year.


I live on the edges of suburbia in a place where the heat comes in hot, hotter, and ridiculously hot (today is one of those days!).

These differences may not seem so significant; in fact, they’re really not.


They’re not the ones that I had in my mind when I decided that she couldn’t really be like me.



Could I trust her enough to walk with her as she walks with Him? I wasn’t sure.





She lives, eats, drinks, and breathes the truth that God is good and can be nothing else.


I swallow it down, knowing He is my only hope, trusting that it will take deep root in me, but in the darkest places of pain yet unhealed, I find it coming back up screaming that it can’t be true.





She’s sat with women who have been exploited, abandoned, widowed, wounded.


I sit with one of those women every day - myself.


Has what she says been tested in her life? Or does she live a life free of the darker colors?


Then I read her post the other day. Oh. I had no idea. Wow. Yes, she knows suffering. Yes, she is one of those women too. Yes, she is who she says.


Yes, I can trust her.


Thank you Ann for offering yourself as you walk with Him. All is grace indeed.





If you’d like to journey with her as well, check out http://www.annvoskamp.com/