When An Unpleasant Thing Is The Right Thing

I just got back from a sprint to Seattle. It was grueling, painful and beautiful.

Our oldest son lives in Seattle. A few years back, we brought him a Korean Mastiff puppy he had acquired from someone in the family. Korean Mastiffs are huge and even as a pup, the brute was too large to take on a plane, so wife kitteh and I drove him up there. It was a total grind without much sleep. Puppies don't let you sleep, after all.

Fast forward to today, and the dog, now full-grown had taken ill. For the last year or so, oldest son kitteh has been run ragged by his sick dog. He did everything he could for it, but working full time and taking care of a chronically ill dog proved to be too much for him. He didn't have the heart to put the dog down for a moderate illness and he couldn't bring himself to take him to the pound. When the opportunity came up to return the monstrous beast to his original family, we jumped at it.

Or rather, I jumped at it. Oldest son kitteh was too exhausted to jump at anything. I flew up there on Friday night and on Saturday morning, we were on the road in a rented Ford SUV. Driving with an unhappy and exhausted son and a huge, sick dog may have it's own pleasures, but whatever those may be escapes me. We made it to Sacramento the first night and I had arranged a hotel not in zombieland and not filled with roaches that still accepted large dogs.

Success!

Well, until the dog woke up at 0215. At that point, being a morning person, I was awake. I knew that I wasn't going back to sleep and this was as much energy as we were going to have all day, so by 0245, we were wheels rolling heading south.

If you had asked me 6 months ago to plan a perfect weekend, it would have involved Gulf oysters in Alabama. It wouldn't have, in a million years, involved driving a sick dog and a heartsick young man down I-5 at 0330.

It was one of the happiest moments of my life. While the dog slept in the back and son kitteh slept in the passenger seat, I grinded it out. As I watched the sky in the east grow light, some 3 hours into the trip that morning, I knew I was doing what God wanted me to do.

I was the jigsaw puzzle piece that fit. It felt like that. I was giving love to a dog who was going to have a chance at a healthy life. I was allowing a son to have some peace and rest in his life after the trip. Wife kitteh was tearful with love for the sacrifice I had made without complaint.

But it wasn't a sacrifice. It was joy. It was the joy of doing what the Big Man wanted me to do in that particular moment. Now, at home, drinking a hazy double IPA while I type, I'm probably not doing what God wants me to do, but in that one, shining, exhausting, grinding moment, I was.

Lose yourself in Him and you will find joy. In surrendering yourself and forgoing your own pleasures for others, you find total fulfillment.

I need to learn how to take photos as I drive. The AI image doesn't do justice to the view I had.