What My ‘Encourageable’ Rescue Dog Taught Me About Grace
The Unexpected Teacher
Our first 72 hours together were, however you spell it, rough. He was supposed to arrive on a Monday afternoon at the very reasonable hour of 3:00 p.m. at the Austin airport. This was perfect, as I was recuperating from a full weekend with two Sunday services and a rushed move into a new home. But then, the phone rang. It was the Kawaii SPCA, informing me it would be too hot in Austin—over 85 degrees—for such precious cargo.
His flight plan was diverted. Instead of a simple trip to Austin, he would now fly from Kawaii to Seattle, and then on to Dallas-Fort Worth, a four-hour drive away. To be unloaded in the cooler morning air, his new arrival time was the ungodly hour of 6:30 a.m. This revised itinerary meant I had to leave my home at 2:30 a.m. on a Monday morning.
It just so happened that in the Christian liturgical calendar, September 29th is the feast day of St. Michael and all the angels. I found this serendipitous, believing I was about to pick up a precious cuddly angel. I was told he would likely be shy and skittish, and I was prepared for that. What I was not prepared for was his absolute encourageability. The first day, he relieved himself indoors. The second, he tried to leap out of my moving truck onto a busy street, and when I lunged to save him, he bit me. My teacher had arrived, and his name was Mystic.
Four Surprising Truths About the Spiritual Journey
This challenging experience peeled back the layers of my own understanding of faith, growth, and grace. It revealed four profound and counter-intuitive truths about the spiritual journey—lessons learned not in a quiet chapel, but in the frantic chase of a runaway dog.
True Spirituality Is About Changing You, Not Anyone Else
The initial struggle with Mystic was all-consuming. His biting, his running away, his complete refusal to cooperate—it was all I could focus on. My first instinct was to manage, to correct, to change him. My goal was to fix his behavior to make my life easier.
It was only when I sat down, exhausted and frustrated, with the writings of theologian Richard Rohr that my perspective shattered. His words struck me with the force of revelation:
"Authentic spirituality is always about changing you. Never. about changing anyone else."
Suddenly, the problem wasn't Mystic’s rebellion. The problem was my own reaction, my lack of patience, and my limited capacity for unconditional love. The spiritual work wasn't about house-training a dog; it was about expanding my own heart. The journey had to be inward.
Salvation Is a Deep Marinade, Not a Quick Glaze
As Mystic slowly began to trust me—first by jumping into my lap, then by leaning into me so closely I could feel his heartbeat—I realized something profound about the nature of rescue. Saving him was not an instantaneous event that happened the moment I picked him up from the airport. It was a long, slow process of building trust and helping him feel safe after a year of fending for himself in the wild.
This experience gave me a powerful new metaphor for salvation. It’s not a mere glaze that can be brushed on quickly in a single moment of conversion. Rather, it is a deeper marinade that has to soak its way all the way to the soul.
This journey toward wholeness is an "ongoing, even eternal process." It’s often messy. It involves running away, testing limits, and sometimes "even rejecting, lashing out at or biting those who are just trying to save us." But with time and persistent love, fear gives way to trust, and we finally find ourselves at home in the arms of the one who has been waiting for us all along.
Holiness Begins with Humility, Not Perfection
The Gospel of Luke tells the parable of two men who went to the temple to pray. One, a Pharisee, stood by himself and thanked God that he was righteous and not like other people. The other, a tax collector, stood far off, wouldn't even look up to heaven, and simply prayed, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner."
I’ve always understood this parable intellectually, but I felt it in my bones on the day Mystic slipped his collar and took off running. My response was to chase him, leap dramatically to tackle him, and end up face planted in the turf looking like a human combination of hot dog vendor and tuba section leader who'd come out of the stands to embarrass himself. It was a ridiculous, humbling moment. There was no self-important posture, only the raw, undignified reality of my failure to control the situation. In that moment of humility, I was far closer to the tax collector than the Pharisee.
The lesson became crystal clear.
"Holiness begins with humility. The awareness that we're the ones who ran off."
It starts not with our perfection, but with the honest admission that we, too, have distanced ourselves from the very source of our salvation.
The Journey Is a Marathon, Not a Sprint
Near the end of his life, the Apostle Paul reflected on his difficult and exhausting journey, writing that he had "fought the good fight" and "finished the race." His life was a testament to the fact that the spiritual path is rarely a straight or easy one. He felt alone, was deserted by friends, and held on at times by the "tattered threads of the end of rope."
Paul knew that the spiritual life is not a "simple sprint toward sweetness and light," but a "grueling marathon toward the deepest, most difficult but most abiding joy." It is a long and winding road home, full of unforeseen twists and turns. The journey requires endurance, faith, and the courage to keep putting one foot in front of the other, even when we feel lost. But the ultimate promise is that we never walk it alone. We are always in the presence of one "who will always run after us, who will perpetually stand beside us," leading us home.
From the Dog Park to the Parish Hall
Years ago, when I first arrived at a new church, people kept coming into my office not to welcome me, but to warn me. There was one church lady, they said, whom I was to avoid like the plague. Some even hoped I’d make her so mad she’d leave.
Her name was Emmaene Horton. She was a former English teacher who served as the church librarian, and she made the Pharisee in the gospel look gentle, kind, and gracious. She lived up—or down—to every expectation.
But having learned something from a certain four-legged spiritual guide, I just kept trying. I tried to understand her, to reach her, to forgive her, to love her. I did not give up on her. After her husband died and she was diagnosed with cancer, she began to realize we were all still there for her. And she changed.
Months after I had moved to Hawaii, I received a letter from her. The envelope was decorated with pink flamingos, an animal she would have previously argued should not be taken seriously. In her handwritten letter, this woman who began our relationship by running in the other direction, who stiffened up at the prospect of a hug, who bit me verbally if not physically, told me she missed me. She missed my sermons, which she had routinely criticized. She said she loved me.
And then she wrote a line I’ll never forget: "I am so glad I never gave up on understanding you."
For a moment, I was mad. The nerve! And then I realized she was absolutely right. The gospel truth about every one of us is that although it wasn't easy, although it took a very long time, someone never gave up on understanding us, appreciating us, forgiving us, and loving us.
Still on the Pilgrim's Way
The truth is, we are all imperfect pilgrims on a journey. Like Mystic, we carry scars from battles no one else knows about. We run, we hide, we lash out in fear. Not one of us has "yet arrived." We are all still on the pilgrim's way, learning as we go.
So, where in your own life is an unexpected teacher waiting to reveal a deeper truth? And are you willing to be humble enough to listen?
