What I Learned from Fostering a Dog

Last weekend we decided to foster a dog from a nearby shelter. My husband has wanted a dog since before we got married, but I already had a cat when we got married, and we've lived in apartments until this year, so we never had the opportunity to try a dog until now. We decided to foster rather than adopt right away because we had no idea how our cat would react and wanted to give her a chance to try the arrangement before totally committing. As it turns out, she was not happy with a dog barking and running around the house. She wasn't the only one who wasn't quite ready for a new family member, though!

Keeping a dog for two nights showed us a few practical things, most importantly that we either need to get an older, relaxed dog, or wait for a while until trying a young, active dog again. However, what surprised me about this weekend adventure was that the experience reminded me of truths unrelated to the dog itself.

First, the experience reminded me that my husband is on my team. He was as giddy as a little kid on our way to the shelter to pick up the dog. He was talkative and hopeful. I could sense how much having a doggy companion means to him. A dog draws out his affections (like a cat draws out mine). But as soon as it became clear that this dog was not going to work in our family, my husband changed gears and did not even show too much disappointment (although I know he felt it). He reassured me that our marriage was more important to him than a dog, and that he would happily keep waiting until it's a better time to get a dog. This reminder of my husband's graciousness was encouraging to me. I need not feel guilty that I'm dragging him down by my past decision to get a cat (or, indeed, by my high emotional needs and lack of extra energy right now to take care of a dog). He is for me.

Second, I am for my husband. Yes, it's true! The fact that I was willing to at least try the dog reminded me that I am stronger and more capable of stepping out of my comfort zone than I had realized since becoming a mom. I was willing to stretch. It just turned out that this particular situation would have been a snapping, not a stretch!

I told my husband on our way home with the dog that a verse in the Bible had encouraged me to accept the challenge of dog fostering:

"Enlarge the place of your tent; Stretch out the curtains of your dwellings, spare not; Lengthen your cords and strengthen your pegs." Isaiah 54:2

One of my favorites, this verse has encouraged me many times with the idea that it's good to let go of my control a little bit in order to live life more fully. On the whole, I'm glad we fostered the dog. Even though it didn't work out as we'd hoped, I think the curtains, cords, and pegs of our marriage and our family were effectively stretched out, lengthened, and strengthened as a result of our adventure.

All or [Something]

My daughter's first birthday is approaching, and I've been remembering the day she was born. The labor and delivery experience was mostly just what I could have hoped for, but there were a couple of incidents that I wish I could go back and change (as you can read about in a post I wrote to document the experience). These lingering regrets were the topic of a recent tearful bedtime conversation between my husband and me. It may seem silly, but yes, that frustrating disappointment was still bothering me. I told my husband that I wished I could go back and fix it. True to his teacherly style (though he's not a teacher), my husband counseled me using a metaphor I could relate to as an English major: "Why? The paper has been turned in. It's done. Forget about it and move on!"

"But I want to turn in an addendum!" I moaned. "I want to fix the broken things." His response was a revelation and turning point for me: "It's not broken." Simple.

He was completely right, of course. Why, then, had I been feeling so strongly that my labor and delivery experience was broken somehow?

My general take on life, especially tasks I feel responsible for, could fit the expression that "it's all or nothing." Washing with a bar of soap that turned out to smell strange? Use it all up anyway. Using cloth diapers? Better not reach for that disposable. Cleaning house? Darned if it's not a disaster every evening when I haven't swept, mopped, dusted, and wiped down the entire house. In other words, it's all or nothing or I've failed.

But lately I've had to adjust my expectations of myself. Having a kid complicates things. Honestly, having a life complicates things. The cloth diapering is a good example of a responsibility that I've relaxed about. Sometimes a disposable is necessary or just plain easier, and using one doesn't mean that all of the cloth diapering is wasted. We can still have the benefits of cloth even if I use a disposable now and then.

The same is true of the labor and delivery that I've struggled to get past emotionally. Nothing about it needed fixing. Rather, my feelings are what need some adjustment. In reality, the experience was a good one. God gave us a healthy baby. My focus has to shift as I think more gratefully than regretfully about the whole thing. Sometimes life is not "all or nothing." Sometimes plain, ordinary "something" is enough.

Blind or Bound?

Is love really blind? In Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton argues that love, contrary to the common saying, is not blind:

The devotee is entirely free to criticise; the fanatic can safely be a sceptic. Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.

As an example to support this argument, Chesterton writes, "A man's friend likes him but leaves him as he is: his wife loves him and is always trying to turn him into somebody else." (Given the whole context, it is understood that the wife is trying to improve the husband into his best self, not turn him into something he is not.) In other words, the person who truly loves another person, or a place or object, is not blind to his or its faults, but rather sees them fully and attempts to get rid of them for the sake of the person, place, or object's best interests.

While I enjoy and appreciate this interpretation of love by Chesterton, it reminds me of another favorite set of lines from Shakespeare that take a different tack:

Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity.
Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind;
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. (A Midsummer Night's Dream 1.1.238-41)

Shakespeare's character Helena speaks these lines in her revealing soliloquy, and they seem to agree with the expression that "love is blind." I think this speech may be interpreted in two different ways. First, given the immediate situation of the play when Helena utters these words, we can take it that Helena is admitting to loving someone not perhaps worth her unconditional devotion (a man who does not love her back), (and/)or that she is accusing the man who does not love her of loving another woman who is not as worthy of his love as she herself is.

However, a secondary interpretation is, I think, acceptable, on the larger foundation of Shakespeare's themes in the play as a whole: love focuses not on superficial qualities but on inner worth (hence, it "looks not with the eyes but with the mind"). The things appearing "base and vile" may in fact be lifted up to worthiness simply because they are loved. I imagine a scruffy, mangy dog in an alley being taken in and cared for, trained, and loved until he becomes a companion dog worth having. Love is capable of taking pains to make such transformations.

So, is love blind? Or, as Chesterton puts it, is it instead bound? I think these two interpretations may not be exclusive. Instead, they can work together. According to the Bible's view of it, love could be said to be both blind and bound. This, in fact, might be a way of summing up the entire message of the gospel.

Similar to Shakespeare's idea that love transforms base things to dignified things is the Bible's message that God loves people who are filthy with wrongdoing and thereby changes them into people who are clean with goodness. Many verses of Scripture make this statement: "But God proves His own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us!" (Romans 5:8). Again, "He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son He loves" (Colossians 1:13). Because of God's loving gift of His Son, "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come" (2 Corinthians 5:17). People are transformed through God's act of love from sinners in darkness into heirs with Christ Himself (Romans 8:17). God's love could be said to look with the mind rather than the eyes, as He sees the value of the person He is transforming rather than the person's outward appearance. Indeed, God tells Samuel that "man does not see what the Lord sees, for man sees what is visible, but the Lord sees the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7). Jesus' followers are told: "stop judging according to outward appearances; rather judge according to righteous judgment" (John 7:23-25). Perhaps God's love is blind, looking not at the superficial but at the true worth of a person, and therefore making the person worthy.

On the other hand, the Bible makes it clear that true love is not blind to errors or wrongdoing. Instead, it is bound to working hard to gain the best for its object, even if that means pointing out faults. John describes Jesus as being "full of grace and truth" (John 1:14); truth is not to be overlooked or ignored for the sake of love. In Paul's famous treatise on love to the Corinthians, he says that "love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth" (1 Corinthians 13:6). The book of Proverbs explains that God's love involves discipline just like a father's love involves discipline of the "son he delights in" (Proverbs 3:12). God's idea is that love must be bound to the ultimate good of its objects; it cannot simply ignore negative traits that are harmful in the long run.

In the person of Jesus, God's idea of love is perfectly expressed. Through Jesus' death on the cross, God shows His willingness to extend complete grace - a totally free gift of salvation that only a perfectly sinless life deserves. He also shows His righteousness in providing the complete condemnation that only sinful lives deserve. Though Jesus was perfectly sinless, He took on Himself that punishment so that we, deserving of death, might instead have the salvation. God's love is both blind in its willingness to give the free gift and bound in its meeting the righteous requirement of holy justice. True love must be blind enough to look inside at true worth and bound enough to work for the polishing of that worth so it can shine.