Love your enemies

Growing up in a christian home, I was taught all the basic beliefs of Christianity. Most of them made sense, but one I had a really hard time agreeing with was "love your enemies." I began to think about it the other day, and I realized the reason I had a hard time with it is because I was looking at "love" the wrong way. I had always taken it to mean, in this case anyway, that to love your enemies meant you had to like them. You had to *shudder* be friends with them even. Well, I didn't want to be friends with those who had hurt me. I wanted nothing to do with them. So I wasn't going to love them. Then I realized, to love does not mean to like. I can love my siblings, but I'm not always going to like them, or get along with them. In fact, to like someone seems, to me anyway, to be the weakest form of love. To like someone is to appreciate them for their good qualities. To love someone is different. It is to take the good with the bad, and remain faithful anyways. In loving your enemies, you don't have to like them, you don't have to be friends with them. What is required, however, is a willingness to look at this person as a human being, to do for them what you would do for any human, to give them shelter when they are cold, food when they are hungry. It is to treat them with respect, and ultimately, to forgive them for their actions against you. A good example would be something I heard from the movie "The Interpreter." In an African village, if a man committed murder, he would be taken to the river, tied up, and thrown in. The family of the deceased then had the option of either allowing him to drown, or saving him. If he drowned, they had their justice, but if they saved him, they had the healing that comes with forgiveness. I think those who chose to save the drowning man were truly "loving their enemies." It's not an easy thing, but it is worthwhile.

RIP Patches

I would have posted this sooner, but I wanted to wait till I thought maybe I could get through it without crying...nope...

Patches died on June 5th 2010. I wasn't there when my parents and Phillip and took him in because I was in England at the time, but they said it was very easy on him. He just went to sleep.

We had him for 12 years. He was crazy a lot of the time and only about half trained, but he was my best friend. He was always there for me when I needed him, and even when I didn't. He followed me around everywhere...I couldn't get up to go to the bathroom without him following me down the hall. He was my first dog that I really remember anything about. We had another dog when I was younger, but Patches was mine.

When was nine, almost ten years old, my mom finally told me that if I could do all my chores for a month without being asked, I could get a dog. When that month was up, I joyfully started looking through the greensheets and the classified ads in the newspaper, looking for the puppy that I wanted. Some friends of ours helped me out by showing me how to use the greensheets, and even doing some research on what kind of dog I wanted. After several weeks of looking, these same friends, who occasionally checked out the local animal shelters to see what kinds of animals they had, called my parents one night and told them that they had seen what looked to be a 6 month old puppy. He seemed to be very well behaved(the calmest in the kennel) and said we might want to take a look at him. The next day we went down there and there he was, as cute as could be. He didn't bark, or jump or anything. He SEEMED like a perfect angel. He went up for adoption that Saturday, and my dad went to go pick him up. Thus began our time with Patches.

The calmness didn't last more than week, and we soon had our hands full. He was lovable and calm as long as nothing new or exciting was happening, but anytime someone came home, or someone new came in the door, up he got that was that. One time he ran circles around the chair my dad was sitting in because he had so much energy he couldn't sit down. The high school students who met him when we had Bible quiz practice at our house nicknamed him "the psycho dog of death" :P

Another of his nicknames was Houdini. We found out shortly after we got him that if there was a hole somewhere, he would get out. He always came back, though. The day after we got him, we left him outside while we went to church and found the neighbor kids playing with him when we got back. He had gotten out through our fence to the school behind out house and found his way around to our street again. He was nothing if not smart. :) He even managed to figure out a way IN to our house when he was left outside while we were gone. That was the last time we left him outside.

He was my constant companion. It didn't matter where I went, he wanted to follow. When I was in Jr. High, my friend Lauren and I would take a day and spend it hiking in the foothills by my house. He got himself caught in some barbed wire once so I left him at home for a few weeks while his leg healed. Rather than laying under the coffee table in our front room(his usual hiding spot when we left) he sat at the window and watched me leave, howling all the while. He hated being left behind, so if it was possible for me to take him along, I did. I'm pretty sure the foothills were his favorite place to go. So much exploring to be done! Aside from the hikes, and the bike rides(oh the bike rides! he loved running next to me as I rode on my bike.) he also slept with me every night, right next to my bed. He wasn't allowed on the furniture, so he waited until everyone was asleep, then crawled up and laid down, sometimes at my feet, sometimes next to me. I remember one time he almost pushed me off the bed because HE didn't have enough room.

Throughout all the years, he never left me, never abandoned me, never rejected me. If I was crying, he was willing to let me use his shoulder, even though he didn't like it very much. He was my reading buddy and listening ear. He didn't care about anything as long as I was there, and he was GREAT at using his facial expressions to guilt trip me every time I left without him. He truly was my best friend. RIP buddy. I miss you.