Puppy Love

She’s almost five months old and has been running around our home like she’s the queen for seven weeks now. She was born to a hoarder in the south and wasn’t touched by human hands until she was eight weeks old. She was six pounds and timid when the rescue team handed her to me through my car window on a rainy December Saturday morning. The purple ribbon tied around her neck ensured me she was my pup; the one I saw in the online pictures. I wrapped her in warm blanket, held her close and told her she had it made it home. The funny thing is a part of me that I hadn’t realized was missing made it home that morning too. I’ve seen the bumper stickers, the ones that say, “Who saved who?” surrounded by paw prints. Now I understand.

We call her Hazelnut, sometimes Hazel and often times Hazy, although Little Nut suites her best. When naming her, I was inspired by the story of an ancient mystic who wrote these words about a hazelnut almost 700 years ago, “And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazel nut, lying in the palm of my hand, as it seemed. And it was as round as any ball. I looked upon it with the eye of my understanding, and thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered generally thus, ‘It is all that is made.’ I marveled how it might last, for I thought it might suddenly have fallen to nothing for littleness. . .In this little thing I saw three properties. The first is that God made it. The second that God loves it. And the third, that God keeps it.” – Julian of Norwich

I speak her name throughout each day and I am reminded of three properties: God made her, God loves her, and God keeps her or sustains her. This little creature reminds me to connect to the rhythms of life, reminds me to take breaks and play, reminds me to eat and rest, reminds me that I am a little thing too.

On walks under a blue January sky, we sometimes pause. She sniffs the ground and I look toward heaven. My soul whispers the words as a prayer, “You made me, God. You love me, God. You sustain me, God.” Then I call to Hazelnut and we walk the rest of the way home.

Cherie Shaw, CPE Intern