I haven't posted in a while, not that I haven't written about things, I just wasn't feeling courageous enough to share them. This is something I wrote back in 2006. Yes this did happen to me and the events are real. I have openly talked about this experience and it still at times can overwhelm me. At one point it was published on a website-God Bless Humanity. I have since searched their archives and have looked for this on the Internet and have not found it. So, I am guessing it is alright for me to re-post it on my blog. I mean, I wrote it and it was my experience to share :) Again I ask for an open heart while reading. Sharing of such thoughts are not easy. I am vulnerable.
I had received the call one spring morning in 2006 from Wisconsin that my sister’s golden retriever, Rusty was dying. He was a healthy young dog. The reason he was dying was uncertain. All of his organs were shutting down. Now generally I would not have taken a pet’s death too hard, except this dog had been with my sister and her two boys for about 8 years. He was there for them during trying times, including a house fire back in 1998 that consumed everything they owned, including other pets. My sister couldn’t afford to pay with him with her waitressing income, so the family bartered for him. They agreed to work at odd carpentry jobs to get him.
As they days of Rusty’s looming death took place, the details to why he was dying came to light. He had been poisoned. As my sister and her family began to put the pieces of the puzzle together we learned their neighbors in the duplex, which also happened to be their landlords, were the suspects. The landlords my sister once knew had ‘changed.’ The husband and wife split up when the husband became involved with a woman that was a drug user, had Multiple sclerosis and had been on trial for accessory to murder. In the years that followed, the man lost his possessions, the utilities were turned off on his side of the duplex, they would enter my sister’s family’s side of the duplex when they were at work and in school and use their shower, help themselves to food and ‘borrowed’ money from them.
So what did Rusty do to become the victim of their apparent poisoning? Rusty, had been waking up during the wee hours of the night and alerting my sister of ‘activity’ and people entering and leaving the duplex of her landlord. One night, Rusty ‘stopped’ a drug deal going down. Soon afterwards, Rusty lay dying at the vet’s office with organ failure. Watching my sister and her two sons deal with this horrific incident of life was hard. It infuriated me. It made me so angry that hatred began to well up inside of me. I do not like when people take advantage of those less fortunate. And yes, my sister and her family were less fortunate than the landlord who chose to get involved in illegal drugs and lose his possessions. I decided I was going to do something about it. I was going to write those people a letter. It was easy enough to find out their address, since my sister had the adjoining duplex. I already knew their names; I had heard my sister speak of them often.
I carefully picked out some stationary. I wanted it to look pretty. I wanted them to open up the card and think they were getting a friendly note, only to read that their actions would lead them to Hell. Yep, you read the last sentence correctly. I was going to write them and tell them how horrible they were and they were heading to hell. I thoughtfully planned out what and how I was going to condemn them to Hell for their actions. All I had to do was write the card.
One beautiful spring morning, I waited until they boys were in school and Tom was off to work. I took out my beautiful stationary with purple iris’ adorning the cover. The ‘special’ stationary cards I save for important occasions. I sat down at my kitchen table with the warm sunlight streaming in. I opened the cover of the card and dated it. I wrote Dear John and Jane. I then stopped, sat back in my chair and asked my self what kind of person would do something like this? Who would poison the family pet of a hard working mother of two small boys? Who kills one of the only things that bring the family joy? Then I heard a voice say, “Someone just like you.”
I blurted incredulously, “Someone just like me?” “Me?” I was flabbergasted, mystified and shocked. I began to think, I am much better than that. I would NEVER do something like that. Then the question was posed to me, “what kind of person does something like that?” The question posed to me made me began to think of the difference between those people and me. Who would be accessory to murder, kill a family’s pet, be a drug addict, break up a marriage and steal? The answer came like a flash of light. “LOVE.” Love was the answer. They were not receiving it. They did not know it or ever knew it. Or may be the ‘love’ they received was not the love that I had glimpsed in my life and just began to know. The love I had experienced since I began to get to know God and His son Jesus. If others in my life had not shown the love of God towards me, I would be ‘just like them.’
So the Epiphany had hit me. I began to weep at the kitchen table. The card of damnation changed, before I even began to write it. Instead, the words of love, forgiveness, hard work and Jesus poured out of me. I wrote to them that no matter what they had done in life, that they were loved and forgiven. That there is hope and they could receive help. God is there to help them, they just needed to ask. I also wrote that it would not be an easy road to change, but it was possible. It really was possible. And finally, I wrote that I loved them.
I closed the stationary card and looked at its beautiful cover again. The inside now matched the outside. The card now had more than just physical beauty. The words written on the inside of the card now beamed outwards. It was a resurrection of sorts, for the card and more importantly for me
I addressed and stamped the envelope. I walked to the mailbox, still dumbfound at the event that had just taken place at the kitchen table. An angry, hate filled married women of two, being compared to what others would call ‘worthless members of society,’ realizing they were just like me. To this day, I have no idea whether the card made it to the intended people. My sister moved soon afterwards and I never heard about the landlords again. God works in miraculous ways. May be the card did reach them and all the glorious things I hope happened did. They changed their lives. Then again, may be they threw the card away when they read it. Or may be they never received it. Regardless, it changed one person’s life, mine. Now when I start to judge someone and ask, ‘how can someone do something like that?” I remember what I was told. “Someone just like you.”
May you know the true and pure love of our creator, God and our savior and lord Jesus Christ. May the Holy Spirit work within you to help you get to know this love and share it with others. His love makes all things possible, even changing hearts filled with anger and hatred to love, compassion, forgiveness and hope.
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