This person was not going quickly and she just ran right in front of this person’s tire. So it was just really tragic. And I just was not prepared to do that again, to have a puppy. Well, she is seven or nine months. We’d got her when she was little and, but she was still pretty young and I just, I wasn’t prepared to do that again. 

And then we had another dog, we actually had this dog for a while even before we got the puppy and she was a great Pyrenees, those big white, fluffy dogs, and they are a livestock guardian breed and she just would not stay on our property. A livestock guardian breed is really meant to be on a farm protecting animals. And we have five acres with no fence and she did a great job staying with the kids. 

Anytime the kids were out, she would be with them, which is why we wanted her, but she would wander when the kids were inside, she would wander on everyone around us, their property. And she was a great dog and she really just needed 40 acres instead of five. And so we re-homed her to someone who had, I know a little more than 40 acres. So that was really hard for us because we loved her so much, but I did a lot of research on keeping a great Pyrenees on your property. 

And they said you can’t even really build a fence because they’re so big that they’ll just jump a six foot fence. And I was not building an eight foot fence for this dog. So we kind of had two heartbreaking dog situations and for those of you who might be new to the podcast in any way, I am obsessed with dogs. 

I love dogs. I was a dog trainer for a long time. I’ve trained so many dogs and puppies and so it was really hard to be a no dog household for a while. And it has been almost two years and about every week or two, I would go to Craigslist. You can’t post dogs on the marketplace. So I would go to Craigslist and I was looking for, like a two year old doodle mix female that was being given away for a good reason. 

And it wasn’t urgent. We weren’t talking about getting a dog, but I kind of had in the back of my mind, you know, I would really love something like that. I didn’t want to do the puppy thing again. I liked the idea that doodles don’t shed. I mean, that’s pretty amazing. And people do get rid of dogs for really good reasons. 

It’s a great dog and for some reason they need to get rid of it. So on Sunday, I just happened to look again, I hadn’t looked in a while. Cause I wasn’t really looking over the holidays. And someone had posted a four year old Goldendoodle. Nice medium-size like 40 pounds and they had three kids but the third kid had an allergy to dog saliva. 

So she’s a hypoallergenic dog, which is what’s great about doodles, but some people, a very small percentage of the population, are actually allergic to, I think, the enzymes in Dog’s saliva. So they can’t have any dogs. And I know three people. Who has this, even though it’s pretty unusual, but I feel like three is a lot. And so they were devastated. You know, they love this dog. 

She was a very wonderful family dog, but obviously we always choose people over dogs, always, always, right. It’s unquestionable. I love dogs so much. And if my kid was allergic to the dog immediately, I’d just be like, I love you. Goodbye. I’m going to find a good family for you. 

So this woman had posted it four hours before I saw it. And I asked my husband, who’s kind of been on the team. No, we’re not adding anything to our lives right now. So it was quite surprising to me when he said, you know what? That does sound great. Actually, let’s follow up.  So I started messaging her and I said, listen, you’re not going to find a better family than us, you know, I’m a very skilled dog trainer. We have six kids and five acres we’re home all the time. 

You know, we will just love and spoil this dog. So they ended up saying yes, and the next day I go and I get this dog and that was I don’t know, four or five days ago. So it’s still pretty new.  And this dog is lovely. She just hangs out. She is so chill. And she loves to just sit next to you and you can pet her. 

And she’s been so great with the kids. I think I’m a little overwhelmed with my six kids. This family had. A six year old, a four year old. And the young, like maybe nine months old. So I think she’s used to only two smaller kids and I have six kids and they all still just want to play with her better all the time. So she looks a little like, woo that’s a lot, but she’s been very great with them.  

And as I’ve been sitting with her and petting her, I’ve just been struck with what a gift from God it was. And I have to admit, I was really guarded about it for a few days. Kind of like, it felt too good to be true, or, and I think because we had had those kinds of heartbreaking dog experiences.

I don’t know, I just thought, I don’t know, are we going to have a dog again? And because they loved her so much, I was leaving room for them to want her back to just say, you know what? We just, we can’t, we love her so much. We want her back. Which I totally would have just taken her back and been like, of course she’s a wonderful dog.  

And so I noticed it was difficult for me to receive this gift from the Lord. I mean, it was very surprising. I wasn’t expecting it. And it had that kind of feeling of too good to be true around it.  And I’ve watched myself do that and I just thought, wow.  

I want to be open to receiving beautiful and wonderful things from the Lord. And I want to be open to God delighting and surprising me.  

And I think the older you get and the more dings we get in life and the more pain we’ve experienced, it’s pretty easy I think to be jaded or suspicious and sometimes that’s for good reason, we have a history of negative events that have happened. And hurtful things and it’s hard to love again, it’s hard to open your heart up again. But the Lord is good and he loves us so much and I really feel like this dog was a no strings attached gift from God. 

And he just said, you know what Sterling? I want to give this gift to your family and she’s brought so much fun and joy. And at night she climbs up in bed and sits with me while I’m reading a book and then her beds on the floor. So she doesn’t sleep in our bed, but at night she likes to cuddle, which is my favorite thing is just to cuddle with the dog while reading a book. And I’ve just been receiving this gift. And believing that I’m worthy of receiving this gift and that it’s not going to be taken away.  

And that God is good and he brings really good and beautiful things. And so I want you to be open to that. Sometimes we have been in a difficult season and there’ve been some hits. And we have some bruises and scars and we just start expecting bad things. And I want you to be open to the Lord really surprising you today, this week, this month, this year.  

Because I know he has something really special for you. That’s so perfect for you and this dog totally unnecessary.  I think sometimes as Catholics, we have this like, well, I know I’ll have food and shelter. We kind of begrudgingly say, we trust the Lord for that but I want you to trust the Lord for silly and frivolous things. Just things he wants to do because he loves you and he wants you to delight in the world. And it could be big things or little things.  

And for me, it just came in the form of this dog that I was not expecting. And I watched myself have a difficult time receiving it and I just thought I don’t want to live like that. I want to live with open, abandoned. Where my heart is completely open and abandoned to the Lord. And there will be pain and there will be hard things, but there will be surprises and gifts. And fun and sparkle. And I want to be open to that too.  

I want to believe that he is a good and loving father and then he’s thinking about ways to delight us. We do that for our kids. We do, we sit around and we think about things that would delight them even yesterday. This is silly, but we had some applesauce and I knew my five-year-old would be so excited if I said, do you want some applesauce for lunch?  

And he was, he just lit up and he said, yeah, I love applesauce. And I said, yeah, buddy, I know.  And that’s a small example of a gift or a surprise. But, you know what that feels like. You know, when you want to delight your children. And all the more, I think the Lord wants to delight us.  

But catch yourself, If you’re closed. If you’re suspicious. If it’s hard for you to receive gifts. She be curious about that. Because I think God has a surprise for you, I want you to be open to it, and I want you to receive it and just say, thank you, Lord. I’ve just been thanking him for this dog that I did not see coming. And just believing that he gave her to us as a gift.  

And that feels so much better than thinking, oh, no maybe we can’t keep her if something bad will happen or. I don’t know. I don’t want to live like that. So I wanted to share this message with you today. And I’m just going to drop bugging your ear, that’s a weird phrase. Now that I say that I’m not putting any bugs in you, that’s weird.  

A small note that coming up, we’re doing our Lenten Declutter Challenge.  

So we will be opening the doors to that soon. It’s basically almost a two month challenge, a little less than two months. It’s the seven weeks of lent. And I will also, that’s a paid challenge that we do together. And then for free, I have a Lenten study that you can do just like the Advent study. It has daily reflection and a daily audio that you can listen to on a private podcast. So this is free and you can subscribe to the podcast and you get a daily audio file. And then each day has a reflection question and space for you to write in a workbook.  

And it’s about Faustina and going through the diary of Faustina and it’s, it’s just really beautiful. And that work is so special to me and it’s a life-changing work. If you’ve not read the diary of Saint Faustina and you don’t have to read the diary to do this study, I just pull out my favorite quotes and we go all the way from I believe Ash Wednesday all the way through divine mercy, Sunday. So through Easter to divine mercy, Sunday, which is just such a special day and I would love to share that with you. 

So I will link those two resources in the show notes and they will be at catholicmomcalm.com. Usually we have a banner at the top that says, you know what we’re doing for the season. So, those two Lenten things will be linked there so you can find them.

All right my friends I’m praying for you. Be open to God’s surprises. Please pray for me. Thank you so much for listening and have a blessed day.