Every September, my hubby and I pack up our gear and set off for a week in the mountains. To us, there is nothing more healing than that week of quiet, nothing more likely to salve the rough spots of our souls that the world has rubbed raw.  And every year on this trip I have what many people would call a mountaintop experience (pun intended). God meets me in those mountains and ministers to me through all He has created and the rare quiet in my soul.

But every year as we begin to plan our trip, it seems as though the world is against us. Only a few weeks before we were to go this year, our sweet twelve year old black lab, Ty, was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of cancer. This was a terrible blow to our family. We don’t have any real children (furry-variety only) so we tend to be overly attached to our pets. Plus, Ty was one of those once-in-a-lifetime “soul dogs” who was so kind and wise and intuitive that he was essentially an angel in a fur coat. Since there was no way to know how long he would make it, and we didn’t want to leave with him sick, we had no choice but to call off our trip to the mountains.

So for those few weeks we had left with him, we visited all his favorite places, fed him anything he wanted, and spooned him daily. Then, on a Monday morning that last week of August, we looked into our puppy’s eyes and saw resignation there. So we made one of the hardest decisions there ever is to make. We called our vet and spent the rest of the day crying our eyes shut. Then we said goodbye as best we could; as a family, with our baby all wrapped up in his favorite blanket, reflecting back on the years of love and grace he had given us…

 read the rest of  No Laughing Matter, as recently published in Shout Lifestyle Magazine, HERE