[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ne of the great pleasures of my life is watching how Goldie, my two-and-a-half year old Catahoula puppy, prepare to go for a walk. When I say “Walkies!” her ears perk up and her steps get more excited. When I put my sneakers on she starts to stretch like an athlete getting to run a marathon, (I have started to stretch before our walks because of her)! It’s actually when I bring the leash out that she really starts to get excited. My wife and I feel so much better about life just watching how excited she gets at the prospect of going for walk. I wish I had half that much enthusiasm for just the most mundane of tasks.
Then we watched Hurricane Harvey ravage our old stomping ground around Houston, as well as all the other hurricanes in Puerto Rico and the earthquakes in Mexico. We certainly have “weathered” (pun intended) a lot lately. The human as well as material toll was astronomical. The devastation was very real and gut wrenching.
I heard person after person express their thankfulness to God for having delivered them from these catastrophes and it made me think. We only truly appreciate the gift of the life we have when that life is threatened. It was kind of wonderful having family and friends checking on us during Harvey to see if we were okay, even though all we got was much needed rain, oh, and a downed tree or two. What also happens during times like these is we tend to look beyond ourselves to a power greater than our own for our survival, which is as it should be as far as I can tell.
