WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL ABOUT BEING PERFECT

What is fear anyway?  How do you handle it?  What do you do with it? How do you make it stop? Or do you hold it close and tuck it inside a teardrop?

Right now I am afraid.  Afraid for my little 11 1/2 year old blind PBGV who is having an MRI and then immediate surgery after.  Hundreds and hundreds from around the world love her, adore her, and are praying for her.  She has been in my heart since she was 7 weeks old and within hours of being euthanized, because she wasn't perfect. Born with an eye issue, she wasn't able to be sold or bred so the only other answer was to eliminate her.  What compassion and love of life.

I stepped in and said 'No', she is mine.  And 'she will be a soldier's angel'.  And that she has been, for nine years.  She has also been my angel time after time after time.  In turmoil, I have turned to her.  In happiness, I have turned to her and in sadness I shed tears into her neck. I have scratched her neck and snuggled her neck and slipped bandanas around her neck and loved smelling the special Gracie fragrance found only in her neck.

And it is her neck, that has held all of my tears and joys, that is the issue at this time. As I write this, she is just coming out of the MRI and going into immediate surgery to decompress discs 6/7 and 2/3 in her neck. Three days ago her front and back legs just went out. Herniated disks. I don't mind admitting I am scared.  She is older and anesthesia frightens me ~ always has, whether people or pets. And I am not in favor of  being out of control. But I 100% trust her doctors. They are special, extraordinary, caring, compassionate human beings.

 

So today I trust.  I trust the doctors and a higher power to bring her through this and back to me. Gracie has been the soldier's angel for a decade.  Now retired she is my angel.  With all of her issues, blindness, removal of an eye, chronic urinary tract infections, and more, I melt like jelly just looking at her. To me, she is a light like none other. I treasure her and cherish her.

 

On the way to the specialty hospital this morning, I remembered the hundreds of times she and I drove to a rehabilitation hospital to work with patients. I remembered the hundreds of warriors she helped come back to reality from war.  I remembered her racing around my house as a puppy with a torn lavender filled eye pillow, flinging it all over the house so joyfully.  I remember her carrying the sofa pillows to the back yard. I remember her finding a lost turtle in the garden and sitting barking by its side till I came to the rescue. But most of all I remember loving her like nothing else in my life.

 

She brought me through a personal hell.  She made me smile when I didn't think I would ever smile again. She has taught me what unconditional love and acceptance is all about.  But most of all she taught me to never give up no matter what, to love deeply and sincerely, to cherish the little things and the extraordinary moments that come and go before we know it. And she has taught me acceptance of disabilities and to keep on keepin' on through  pain to the other side! And her everyday lesson could be summed up in these words....."what is the big deal about being perfect?"

This morning I sang her favorite song to her, trying to choke back tears, as I drove her to the hospital. "Jesus loves me this I know. For the bible tells me so.  Little ones to him belong.  They are weak but he is strong."  

The phone should ring shortly.  I should be patient.  I should be strong.  But truth is the lump in my throat and the tears in my eyes are winning. Aren't I supposed to be the strong one?  Dealing with wounded warriors with multiple amputations and burn survivors should have made me strong.  

Maybe it did, in just a different way.  Oh to hold her close once again.