Her Voice, Silenced

FullSizeRender-2Today marks the 43rd anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion in our country. Since the decision, more than 57 million abortions have been performed in the United States, roughly 30 million of which were females.

 

A girl’s error, a mother’s choice
The quickest fix silenced the voice.

That could’ve spoken life to men
That could’ve lifted a best friend
That could’ve brought a war to end
That could’ve caused a heart to mend.

That could’ve taught a child to to read
That could’ve blessed a soul in need
That could’ve inspired some great deed
That could’ve led a girl to lead.

Life’s chance was squelched for freedom’s sake
Mid-dream she stayed, ne’er to awake
Her form was split by choice’s quake
Perfect design turned deadly mistake.

O mother, nature weeps for you
No doubt you had the power
Yet now you know the weakness
Of your seedling in that hour.

For she was made for greatness
Hope for women she could alter
But now we mourn and pray with you
Our world has one less daughter.

 

Psalm 139: 13-16-“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.”

Why You Should Never Feel Bad for Your Dog

FullSizeRenderIt only takes a kid to take a dog from man’s best friend to man’s inconvenient chore.

I love my dog and always will. She is an eight-year-old beagle named Lilly. She likes long walks on the beach, really any terrain, especially ones where she leads and can follow her nose to something delightfully disgusting.

She likes to eat bones, people food, things that aren’t food but she still digests, things that aren’t digestible but still apparently worth a shot, and the occasional- nay, daily- yard turd. But she rarely goes for other dogs’ deposits so please don’t let that soil your impression of her.

The truth is, Lilly used to be the apple of our eye. We’d let her up on the couch, take her to the dog park, and even get her vaccinated. They were rich times.

Then we had a kid and it all changed.

That is, everything changed but her expectations. I could see in her big, sad beagle eyes she was incredulous she couldn’t get away with all the stuff she used to. And if she so much as snarled at the baby, she was promptly corrected with demonstrative “NOs” and our most convincing “bad girl” faces.

The thing is, when you’re trying to placate a screaming, crying, crapping, completely dependent homo sapien, it’s hard to find time to meet the canine’s needs.

Sure, we feed her and open the door for her so she can get some fresh air and not poo in our house. But dog parks? Forget it. Walks? Impossible to effectively handle a stroller while your olfactory-focused pooch obeys her nose and walks you.

But in many ways, the dog becomes just another part of the house. Like an ottoman. Or a fern. They become a fixation on the rug, a furry, lumpy, immovable obstacle we are destined to trip over. And when they are upright and wandering about, they must remind us of their needs since we are too distracted to anticipate them. They paw at their water dish or the back door as if to say, “Remember me, the other living thing in your house?”

We are tempted to feel bad about our pet’s new lot, not giving them the attention they once received. But we shouldn’t. I assure you, they are fine. The truth is, they are still doing better than 99.99% of animals on the planet.

Think about it. We have domesticated what should be a wild animal.

My dog lives inside a heated home and sleeps on a plush bed with a soft blanket draped over her. Meanwhile, her untamed relatives are curled up in a dirty den somewhere, with their only concern being staving off predators and hypothermia.

My dog wakes up and gets a bowl of safe food and cool water. If she was wild, she would have to go find, and catch, and kill, a squirrel. And if she actually snagged one that wasn’t rabid or carried some life-threatening disease, she might just save the tail and call herself Davy Crockett. She might.

Seriously, my dog gets a biscuit for sitting. Sitting gives wild dogs a chance to scratch their bugs.

Honestly, she is treated well by essentially any human who meets her. But when a wild animal gets up in our space, we are generally not cordial with it.

What I’m saying is, don’t feel so bad about what your pet is not getting. They’re getting a heck of a lot more than the zillion other creatures scraping by in the wild…even if she does have to fetch her own water.