She came to me in my darkest moments
When I was as broken as my dreams
She cowered under the bed with
the same fear I felt towards people around me --
avoidance I could relate to when it was all I could do
to get through another day with the pain.
She taught me that, in spite of my doubts,
I could still love and express that love.
She coaxed out my nurturing maternal side,
and little by little, as I gained her trust and respected her space,
I learned to hope that there would one day be
someone who showed me the same respect and tenderness.
Gradually, as she came out of her shell
she showed me that life after trauma
can be composed of the small silly moments
that made it worthwhile and so joyful before.
She showed me what it is to play
with the innocence and wonder of a toddler,
even after having been betrayed and abandoned
by the one person you should feel protected by.
Her snuggles brought me out of my pain
out of the loss, the fear and the darkness.
She was in many ways the presence of Christ in my life:
encouraging me to live again, restoring hope beyond the pain,
assuring me I had not been abandoned through it all
and was not alone, now or ever.
According to The Shack, God reveals Himself
in the least intimidating form for us to see.
God packaged His love for me in the form of
a scruffy, scrawny, scared little kitty,
whose two years of life had been defined by instability.
On days when I'm sad and she curls up beside me,
I still feel His love through her.
But I have also been healed to a point where
I can begin to look outside of my "safe" zone and glimpse God
in the everyday details and faces surrounding me in life.
So, tonight, like every night, I offer up my thanks to God
for the many blessings He has given me --
family, friends, faith, health, a job, the hope of a future --
and folded into that list is a precocious and affectionate cat
who's captured my heart with her zeal for life,
and restored my own with her presence.
--May 2, 2010
