I was thinking about Doogie this morning. It’s a beautiful morning, cool, breezy, amazing. I wanted to head down to the dock, and I looked down at Doogie. He’s getting old. He tires easily, and he’s slow. His injury in Texas no doubt still affects him. So I try to meter out his activity for the day, because he wants to live like we used to; he just can’t anymore.
I thought about what a great companion he’s been during some difficult times. He’s a rescue who came to me with behavior issues that were a direct result of the life he’d lived. Now he lives simply: food, walks, treats, repeat. But he’s faithful. He doesn’t wander, unless he’s confused and trying to find me. He’s risen above many of his old behavioral issues, but only with me. He’ll still exhibit them with strangers.
That’s an interesting picture to sit with.
Most of us are rescues. The lives we’ve lived leave an imprint of mistreatment and our own misbehavior. When we enter new relationships, we bring old ways into a new place. Trust is the only path forward. And trust is one of the hardest qualities to earn and to give. It exists on a razor’s edge, always at risk of tumbling off at the slightest hint of betrayal or misdirection. It can’t be conveyed without the passage of time and shared experience. It needs a proving ground, a place where it can be repeatedly observed before it’s accepted as real.
Doogie used to bite at anyone who got their head too close to his. Trying to kiss him, or just resting my head next to his, would get a snarl and a snap. Strange behavior. I understand instincts around proximity and close space, but I remember being shocked. I’d had him for a while, and he still did it. Gradually it subsided. I don’t try to move in on him, but now he moves in on me. I could probably rest my head against his if I wanted to, but I don’t; I think it’s something he had to overcome, and I doubt it would feel comforting to him. Other people still have the instinct to get close to his face, and he reverts right back to that old behavior. It’s not gone. It’s just allowed where there’s trust.
I am a rescue too. I have things I’ll snarl at and bite at. I’ve got a more refined approach; I can recognize the feeling and mute it, but it’s still there. My own trust-to-time ratio is still very high.
I blame no one. Life is a path we walk, and on that walk we’re among people. They’re on their own paths, and where those paths cross, there’s sometimes a shared stretch. What each of us takes from that shared journey is individualized and nuanced. Bad motives and cruelty can exist there, but more often it’s just a matter of perspective: the level of maturity someone is walking in at the time, shaping the atmosphere of that season. In fact, differences in maturity, spiritual or emotional, are often what drive change, and can leave us either wounded or a little better.
I think of a kennel, walking down the aisle, looking at all the dogs who have no one, torn up because I want to rescue them all. And yet when I walk among people in everyday life, I don’t see the ones who need rescuing. I can’t rescue them, because I am one of them. But I can look at them as someone who’s already been rescued.
Saved by the only one who can. I’m out of the kennel.
But being out doesn’t mean I’m finished. I still carry the marks of where I’ve been. I still snarl sometimes when someone gets too close to the wrong place. The difference now is I’m not progressing from a random place; I’m progressing from a place where I can trust in God and grow from there. That’s the ground I get to stand on. Not fully trained. Not fully healed. Just no longer in the kennel, and no longer walking it alone.
