Leash Challenged

Maxie is an eight year old miniature dachshund. The color of a grill-blackened frankfurter, she lives up to the nickname Wiener Dog.

This little bundle of fur is our huntress. Since the yard isn’t fenced, we have a forty-foot long rope tied to the corner of the deck. The hook end lives just outside the sliding door, waiting for Maxie’s whimpered signal that she needs to go out. The minute she is released she sniffs the air, rushing to follow the trail of the squirrel or bird or cat that has passed through the yard. She would hunt it into the next time zone . . . if she hadn’t been leashed to the deck.

Part of the system works really well. Maxie does remain firmly confined to our yard. But, because the bird feeder is on a pole and the maple tree is nearby, it is a rare occasion when Maxie manages to return to the slider to be let in. Usually she gets herself completely tangled up, her neck straining against The Leash which has somehow woven itself so tightly around trees and poles that she can’t even move.

At this point she begins to bark, noisily and with a decided note of scolding. The demon-possessed Leash has once again managed to grab her by the throat.

When she was a puppy, I would unsnap the leash and hold her in one hand while I unwrapped the rope. But the energy and strength packed into that little dachshund body have required a new approach. I have to coax her around the obstacle course of trees and poles – the required number of circles in the required order. When she is completely untangled, I pronounce the magic word “Okay” and she races toward home in a frenzy of freedom. She has no idea how I have exorcised the demonic powers of The Leash; she only knows that once she was ensnared and now she is released.

Over time, Maxie has come to have a certain amount of faith in me. She looks puzzled as we perform our strange little un-tangle-ment ritual, but she follows. Each time we work together, I think about the things God asks me to do and how meaningless they sometimes seem.

I find myself tangled up in quarrels or financial problems or health issues. Some of the problems I, like Maxie, have created; some are the result of the fallen world we live in.

Eventually, I end up feeling grabbed by the throat. So I stand and yap scoldingly for God to come rescue me. God coaxes me through paths that I don’t understand, sometimes calling me round and round the same dumb maple tree until I’m dizzy. It makes no sense.

And I wish to goodness God would pick me up in strong arms and carry me away from my troubles. But that wouldn’t require me to exercise faith in His wisdom and goodness.

God grant me the grace of a leash-challenged dachshund to follow where I am led, to trust the one who loves and cares for me, and to celebrate with joy my daily release from the entanglements of sin.