To Do

I like to make lists. I make grocery lists, lists of school assignment due dates, lists of what to pack on a trip. I write lists on paper and now have free apps on my phone that let me make lists digitally. Lists keep me organized and help me to ensure that I don't forget anything important. Lists can be a wonderful thing.

But sometimes I feel as though I'm living my life like it's a list. I start to view everything in my day as just another item to be accomplished and checked off so that I can move on to the next. Things I love to do start to be framed in my mind as just another item on the day's list. I have woken up on a day off thinking, "Ok, first I need to take a walk. Next I need to play with the dogs before I bake chocolate chip cookies. Then I want to read at least three chapters of this novel that I am reading purely for pleasure." This frame of mind can really suck the joy out of life.

Yesterday I woke up to one of these days. It was a beautiful, sunny day with a slight breeze so it wasn't too hot. I dutifully got dressed and went outside to take a walk, not because I was excited to move around in the lovely weather, but because it was the first thing on my mental list for the day. I don't remember much about the first half mile or so of the walk. My mind was absorbed in all of the other things I *had* to do that day, which led to the list for the next day, which led to the next...

A turkey brought me back to noticing what is important.

Turkeys are big, funny-looking birds. I think they are one of the animals that can be pointed to when people want to show God's sense of humor. And there, in my neighborhood, just wandering along, was a turkey. I stopped walking and watched it as it meandered across the road, through someone's yard, and out of sight. As I resumed my walk I started to notice other creatures - several types of birds, a few squirrels. I saw the trees and flowers in all of the yards along the street. I felt the warm sun on my face and cool breeze on my skin. I noticed the houses and thought about how blessed we are to have safe homes with running water, electricity, and climate control. One positive thought lead to another just as my stressful thoughts had just moments before.

Joy, hope, beauty, peace - they're all around us. My prayer is that I slow down enough and look outside myself enough to see, and truly embrace them.

P.S. Brought to you by Patrick on Spongebob Squarepants.

Rest In Peace, My Little Friend

My dog Shooter died today. My dad's and my dog, I should say. Our family got our first dog, Sophie, through a Bichon Frise rescue agency in 1999. Not only was she my first dog, but she was my dad's first dog. So, she really became my dad's dog. The next year, I wanted to get a Yorkie, so we rescued Shooter. He was such a good little friend. He was fun and playful, and he always sensed when I was upset and would come sit in my lap and lick my nose. Like many small dogs, he thought he was actually large and ferocious. He once barked at a big dog at the vet's, and the big dog actually shied away!

I commuted for most of college, but when I finally moved out Shooter stayed at home because I couldn't stand to separate him from Sophie. He also was not fond of Marley, the labradoodle that my husband and I adopted. So, over the last few years, Shooter also became my dad's dog, along with Sophie. Two years ago at the age of 13 Sophie died peacefully at home after my dad ran a doggie hospice for her for a week.

My dad and I have known that Shooter's time was coming. He was 14 and though he was doing well for his age, he was quite frail, and probably deaf, but he didn't always listen to us anyway, so we couldn't be sure. My dad said that Shooter seemed fine all day yesterday, but then one moment last night he wasn't. Daddy now thinks Shoot had a heart attack. My dad called me this morning, but then had to go to work. I was home sick with a sinus infection and decided to just stay home until my dad got back from work and called me. Then we would see if Shooter was better, gone, or needed to be taken to the emergency vet center.

I feel a bit terrible saying this, but I prayed that Shooter would die peacefully before my dad got home. Being euthanized doesn't seem like a very dignified way to die, and if I'm honest, I didn't want the emotional pain of going through the process. I prayed all day for peace for the three of us. Then around 1:30, I just felt like I should go to my dad's. I have a key, so I went over and found Shooter laying on the floor right next to his bed. He'd been gone for awhile. I started to shake and cry, so I went outside.

I didn't want to interrupt my dad at work to tell him on the phone, so I called my husband and my mom to talk. I prayed for strength and peace for the rest of the day. When my dad came home, I cried some more, he wrapped Shooter in his doggie blanket, and called the vet to find a place to have him cremated. We were referred to Deb at Chartiers Custom Pet Cremation in Bridgeville. We drove him over, and Deb was wonderful. She was very kind, took care of the details efficiently, and listened to the little stories we shared. My dad will get the cremains back in a custom made bag. I picked red fabric with little white hearts on it because his collars had always been red. She will also take a snipping of his fur and wrap it around a silk rose, also red. I'm going to assemble these with Shooter's collar and a photo in a shadow box as a nice remembrance.

My dad asked me if it was silly that he was so upset over a dog. I'm sure some people would say so, but I don't think so at all. As much as the last few chapters of Marley & Me by John Grogan made me cry my eyes out, he made a good point in that we spend more time with our dogs than most people in our lives. Our dogs see us at our best and our worst, and they always love us. They provide companionship, protection (ok, well maybe 6 pound Shooter didn't), and laughter. Shooter was part of our family for 11 years. Of course we are sad, of course we have to mourn. I am just so thankful that he died peacefully without suffering for long and that he left us with so many happy memories. Rest in peace, my little friend.

Brother Francis

Today is the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, and so I am sharing my most recent article from my church's newsletter, the Spire.

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Brother Francis and the Friendly Beasts by Margaret Hodges with pictures by Ted Lewin is a children’s picture book about the life of Francis of Assisi. Francis was born into a wealthy family in Italy, but when he was a young man he renounced his wealth to serve the poor. He traveled the Italian countryside preaching God’s word and helping those in need. As he went, “he saw the beauty and grace of animals, of birds singing as they flew, of silvery fish darting in clear water. He heard the hum of insects in the roadside grass, and they, too, were beautiful. God was the father of all living things, and all were brothers and sisters. They gave him joy, and he sang for joy as he walked the roads.”

In Catholicism, Francis of Assisi is the patron saint of animals and the environment. Every October 4^th, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi is celebrated with a Franciscan Blessing of Pets, a custom that honors Francis’s love for all of God’s creatures. This is one of the prayers from the blessing service:

“The animals of God's creation inhabit the skies, the earth, and the sea. They share in the ways of human beings. They have a part in our lives. Francis of Assisi recognized this when he called the animals, wild and tame, his brothers and sisters. Remembering Francis' love for these brothers and sisters of ours, we invoke God's blessing on these animals, and we thank God for letting us share the earth with all the creatures.”

Check out Brother Francis and the Friendly Beasts from the church library to learn more about Francis and help instill a love of God’s creatures in your children.

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While I'm on the subject of St. Francis, check out the new single from Tree Anthem's (my husband's band) new St. Francis-themed CD, Lady Poverty. It rocks! (Sorry, couldn't resist the pun.)

Cognitive Dissonance: Hunting

My husband left the house this afternoon clad head to to in camouflage. Today is the first day of... some waterfowl season (duck, maybe?), and he left to go hunting with a good friend of ours.

My cognitive dissonance starts anew.

Cognitive dissonance is "the feeling of uncomfortable tension which comes from holding two conflicting thoughts in the mind at the same time." We studied it in social psychology when I was an undergrad, and I thought it was a fascinating concept. My uncomfortable tension comes from the fact that I love my husband dearly and have a great respect for him. For years I have also had an unequivocal view that hunting is bad. Now my husband hunts. How do I rectify these two opposite ideas in my head?

In an episode of The West Wing (What else?) the president once somewhat facetiously referred to himself as a lily-livered, bleeding-heart, liberal, egghead communist. I could somewhat facetiously say the same thing about myself. I don't like violence. I don't like killing things. I don't like guns. Therefore, I never liked hunting. 

My husband started hunting last season with two dear friends of ours who grew up hunting. I knew that these men were incredibly knowledgeable and stringent about gun safety. It didn't really bother me that they hunted, but I didn't like the thought of my husband hunting.

As the season went on, Jason (my hubby) got more and more excited about hunting. He came home talking about the connection with nature that he felt sitting outside as the sun came up. I learned that, at least with our friends, conservation is an important part of hunting - caring for the land on which you are hunting and hunting in in overpopulated areas to help protect farmers' crops. And, as Jason pointed out, I like to buy organic free-range meat, and it doesn't get more organic and free range than what he would bring home.

After thinking about all of this, I decided that I had to push myself to break the cognitive dissonance. My love and respect for Jason are bigger than any dislike I have for hunting, and so I support him in his new hobby.

... If I'm honest, though, I do sometimes hope that the ducks will be this smart:

My Dog Tweets

My last post was a bit glum so I feel the need to write something cheerful. One of the happiest parts of my life has always been my pets. Up until mid-high school I thought I would be a zoologist when I "grew up," and my parents let me have a small menagerie of animals to prepare for my future career. I had the normal childhood pets like hamsters and fish. I also had guinea pigs, hermit crabs, lizards, a hedgehog, and a chinchilla (though not all at once). We didn't get a dog until I was 14. She was a Bichon Frise named Sophie, and I called her my happy puppy. A year later, we rescued another dog, a Yorkie named Shooter, who still lives with my dad.

Fuzzy Sophie

Tropical Shooter

My husband and I have two dogs – Marley, a lab/poodle mix (aka labradoodle) and “her dog Melvin.” We don't know what breed Melvin is, some sort of scruffy terrier mixed with a pit bull terrier, probably. Marley and Melvin have definite personalities. Marley is a 60 pound lap dog who I call my snuggle bug. Poor Melvin was neglected for his first year or so before we rescued him, which left him with an insatiable need for attention. As I watched the different personalities in the dogs, I started giving voice to them. Eventually, I started writing emails from M&M, mainly from Marley, to my husband when he would go out of town for work. On several occasions Jason said that Marley should start a blog. I thought about it, but she just didn’t seem to have enough things to say for a blog. Eventually I decided on Twitter.

I figured I’d do it just for me. It’s a fun creative writing project and it makes me smile. I didn’t think anyone would follow her…. I was wrong. @TheMarleyBug now has over 1,700 followers. That’s crazy!

Here are some of my favorite Marley tweets. I hope they make you smile too.

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i am napping upside down!

we went to the dog park! a dog licked my head!

i wish i was a cat! ha ha! #aprilfools!

my dog melvin sat on daddy’s keys and made the car go beep beep!

i could not decide where to hide my bone so I fell asleep with it under my head!

mommy thought my dog melvin ate her shoe! i just threw up part of it! i don’t know how that got there!

uh oh! i ate some of daddy’s skettios!

my dog melvin wants to tweet! Lllllllllllll.ij cf bn dyuhhhjbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbcxdgfb he isn’t good with the computer box!

when the #steelers #football men come on the tv box they say their name and school! i would say marley freyer! @petsmart!

i decorated my dog melvin for christmas! http://twitpic.com/3c8xnk

Get Out!

This is my article for the October edition of my church's newsletter, the Spire.

I recently checked out a book from the public library called Get Out! 150 Easy Ways for Kids and Grown-Ups to Get into Nature and Build a Greener Future by Judy Molland. It is a short, easy read for adults who care for children. Experiencing nature is important for children’s physical, cognitive, social, and spiritual development, and this book helps adults to nurture children’s interaction with nature.

Get Out! has five sections, and below is one of my favorite ideas from each.

Get Started: Cool Ways to Embrace Nature Today

15: Get to know local trees. Autumn is the perfect time to observe the trees in your yard or local park. Go on a walk with your child and pick up leaves as you go. Ask your child to compare the leaves’ colors and shapes, and learn what type of tree they came from.

Go Further: Projects, Plans, and Outings

52: Take nature and wildlife photography. Molland says that “everyone from small children to adults can do this, and it will develop the habit of looking closely at the world.” This is a great way to explore God’s earth with your child, and the photos can be family mementos.

Get Smart: Be Green Consumers—and Eaters!

75: Donate and purchase used clothes. The church rummage sale is the perfect place to teach your children about the environmental and economical benefits of recycling clothing. Help them to pick some of their old clothes to donate, and then take them to the rummage sale to buy a new item that they need.

Get Active: More than Just the 3 Rs

102: Make art. Molland suggests that you “see what you and your kids can make with old bottle caps, old wrappers, ribbons, bows, milk cartons, and toilet paper rolls.” Children are naturally creative and can make beautiful art out of common items that we might usually take for garbage. As I child, I loved creating crafts from bits of things that I found around the house.

Get Involved: Take a Green Stand

140: Defend an endangered species. Help your children learn about endangered species (on websites for Kid’s Planet, World Wildlife Fund, or the National Wildlife Federation) and then choose one to help protect. By making a small donation, you can adopt an endangered animal. The money goes to help protect the species, and your children usually receive additional information and a picture of their animal.

Get Out! provides fun ideas to help adults bond with their children and learn about the environment. As we help children to grow closer with nature, we are also helping them to grow closer to God.

Free Click-to-Donate

I'm a big fan of click-to-donate websites. They are just what they sound like -- a simple click of the mouse creates donations from sponsors to organizations that support charities. You can click once each day on each cause, and it only takes a few seconds.

My favorite click-to-donate site is Care2.com. I found it sometime in the late 90s, and I've been clicking ever since. There is a lot to this site, a lot more than I've explored: news, e-cards, social networking, and easy actions that can be taken to help the world. Care2's current click to donate causes are children, rainforests, big cats, breast cancer, pets, seals, oceans, primates, global warming, stopping violence, and wolves.

A similar site is the Greater Good's Click to Give. On this site you can click to support charities related to hunger, breast cancer, literacy, child health, rainforests, and animal rescue. This site has a shop that sells clothes, jewelry, home ware, and other items. Proceeds from all purchases also go to charity. They now have an iPhone app called Touch to Give based on Click to Give.

This site lists other click-to-donate pages. They're a quick and easy way to make a difference. I try to remember to click every day. It is a small thing, but it adds up and does help to make a difference.

I've been thinking that it is time for me to do more than just the small things, though. And I think it involves a trip to Haiti....

Fear

I have a confession to make. I have written on this blog about the glory of nature and how I believe that every creature is sacred. Well, I lied.

House centipedes, or gazillion-leg bugs as I call them, are of the devil. I despise them. They bring out the worst in me. I think of myself as a peaceable person. I don't often shout. I am almost never violent. But all of this changes if there is a centipede in my house. I yell, threaten, and curse the creature's offspring. I get out the bug killer and spray half of the can on the leggy thing. And then I cower in another room until my husband can remove the body.

Why do I cower? Because the real reason that I despise centipedes is because they scare me. Bugs and creepy-crawlies in general don't bother me much. If there is a spider in the house, I take it outside. I've held snakes and had pet lizards. But I'm afraid of centipedes. And that fear leads me to do things I wouldn't usually do and say things I wouldn't usually say. I am not proud of this part of myself.

This goes beyond bugs, of course. Don't we all have areas of our lives where we give in to fear? Taylor Haley spoke at my church a few weeks ago and said that fear and faith cannot exist at the same time. That idea has been resonating with me. I've been trying to seek out these areas of my life and choose faith over fear. I've also been trying to live the famous quote by Eleanor Roosevelt and do one thing every day that scares me. These things that I'm doing are small things, but they are meaningful leaps of faith, a good beginning. It feels amazing to trust God and start to let go of my fears.

I'm making progress, but it is going to take a lot of growing before I am ready to befriend a centipede.

Cat Dumbbells (or How Pets Improve Your Health)

My dogs, Marley and Melvin

I just read an article on WebMD called "27 Ways Pets Can Improve Your Health." I have always loved dogs and was interested to learn more about the health benefits they can provide.

Therapists prescribe time with a pet to help combat depression. Fifteen to thirty minutes with a pet lowers cortisol (stress hormone) levels and increases serotonin (your brain's happy juice). I didn't realize that some therapists have also started using dogs in therapy sessions. 

Certified therapy dogs visit patients in hospitals and nursing homes to boost their mood. (I actually hope to get my dog Marley certified some day.) Dogs can also be trained to help people with epilepsy, diabetes, and Parkinson's disease.

Owning a dog or cat lowers your blood pressure and your risk for heart disease, and children who grow up with fuzzy pets are less likely to develop allergies and more likely to have strong immune systems.

And, this was my favorite part of the article, while discussing how pets can improve your level of physical fitness it said that "some people like to use their cat rather than dumbbells when doing weight training." Fantastic.

(To hear what my dog Marley has to say, check out TheMarleyBug on Twitter.)

All Creatures Great and Small

I was asked to start writing "green" articles for my church's newsletter, the Spire. (Please don't judge us by our website!) This is my article for June.

My husband and I went to the Pittsburgh Zoo today. I love the zoo. Until the last year or two of high school, I thought I was going to go to college to become a zoologist. Animals amaze me, and I can’t help but see God’s power and wonder in them.

We walked by the Kodiak bear at feeding time. The zookeeper was throwing entire pieces of fruit – pear and oranges – and the bear was catching them in his mouth and eating them whole. This must not be a big deal with you can grow to weigh upwards of 1,400 pounds, but it awed Jason and me. To be just yards away from an animal of that size, that possessed such raw strength, was overwhelming.

After we watched the Kodiak eat dinner, we watched a mother otter and her baby. They were cuddled together, the baby wiggling and snuggling into the mother, and the mother grooming the baby. I couldn’t help but see God’s compassion and nurturing Spirit were in these two small animals.

I always think of how God nurtures and protects his creations when I look at the weedy seadragon, which looks like a seahorse that started to sprout leaves. When the seadragon swims into the plants in the aquarium, you almost can’t see it. God thought to make the seadragon’s body resemble its habitat so that it could hide from predators.

God thought to provide strength and protection for his creations, but I also think he had fun when creating them. Some of the animals that we saw just looked ridiculous. The ostrich is a silly-looking bird. It is huge – five to nine feet tall – but has a very tiny head. The mandrill is a primate whose snout looks like it was molded out of blue and red plastic. The Reeves muntjac is a tiny deer that is smaller than our dog.

I encourage you to go to the zoo, or just go into your yard, and open your eyes to see God in the creatures around you. Be amazed, be overwhelmed, or just have a good laugh.

Opposites

I am a library assistant on the children's floor of my local library, and all of the children's literature I've been reading has started to shape the way I view things. After reading news stories about two different animals I thought, opposites! If there are opposites in the animal kingdom, Einstein, the world's smallest horse, and the giant Echizen jellyfish are it. 

Einstein weighs six pounds. The Echizen jellyfish weighs up to 660 pounds. Einstein is fuzzy and lives in New Hampshire. The Echizen is decidedly not fuzzy and lives off the coast of Japan. Einstein makes envokes "awws" in small children. The Echizen evokes fear in ships' captains. Mammal, invertebrate. Land, water.


They are two incredibly different creatures, but both amaze me. How can a horse be that small? And a jellyfish that big? Einstein is meek, delicate, and still a vulnerable baby. The Echizen is giant, powerful, and deadly. I can't help but see God in both animals. Animals have always awed me -- the cute ones and the less cuddly ones. That God created so many different creatures... it just overwhelms me. This may not be the best thing for someone who just started a blog, but sometimes it leaves me speechless.