Saturday was a gorgeous, sunny day. I went walking with our three dogs.  The oldest dog Zeus, who is approaching eleven, is obsessed with fetching.  Anytime we walk, I am constantly throwing the ball for him to retrieve. He is always with me.  Seebee, the crazy dog, has to always be in the lead way up ahead. Carlton, the little prissy inside dog, is always in the middle, desiring to keep up with Seebee.

When I say walking the dogs, I don’t mean on a leash in the neighborhood. We were all roaming free on trails in the woods and on the open area where loggers have been clear-cutting. After strolling for about an hour, we were all four tired, thirsty, and dusty. All the creeks on our 40 acres had dried up from the lack of rain. So, the dogs were unable to drink until we neared our yard that has an acre lake. The side near the dam remains deep, but the opposite side has receded a lot due to the drought. Carlton headed on to the house to go inside, and Seebee just continued to run around, but my tired, old Zeus needed water.

“It will be like walking on water!”

I instructed him to walk over and drink, but he just stood there looking at me as I was holding his tennis ball. “No more ball, go drink.” He remained staring at me with his big brown eyes as he panted hard. “Fine, come on. I’ll go with you to get a drink.” He followed me just a few steps and then stopped. “Zeus, how cool we get to walk where part of the lake use to be. It’ll be like walking on water.” Clearly, it doesn’t take much to entertain me. I love to do things I’ve never done before. But Zeus, who never leaves my side, except to retrieve the ball, didn’t budge. Maybe that should have been my first clue!

I took about four steps on the black murky mud, where water used to be. Suddenly the ground beneath seemed to disappear and I sank to mid-calf. Surprised, I quickly tried to step up, but I sank to my knees! At first I began laughing. In my mind I pictured Gilligan pulling Skipper out of quicksand. The more I moved, the deeper I sank. “Zeus!” He clearly didn’t want to come, but walked toward me obediently. I grabbed his back end, but he began to sink too. Then he quickly retreated and ran to safety. Seebee, meanwhile stood to the side watching the show.

Help

My feet felt like lead weights as I tried to raise them out. The more I struggled, the deeper I sank. I found myself standing thigh deep in muck, stuck. I stood there looking around, accessing my situation. Finally giving in, I hollered, “HELP” waiting for someone much stronger than me to pull me out.

As I was walking toward the spigot to hose myself down, the Bible verse “Be still and know that I am God” flooded into my mind. I was overcome with the message portrayed to me. To be perfectly honest, right now in my life things are very challenging and I have decisions to make. I have always kept my faith and my eyes on God. But I find myself  attempting to figure it out, and the more I do, the more trapped I feel. I need to stop trying to fix everything and everybody. I need to be still and let His arms, that are so much stronger than mine, lift me up and out.