When Mabel went missing: Prayer and the family pet
Originally appeared on spirituality.com
My husband and I have marveled at the reliability and convenience of the GPS (Global Positioning System) in cars. For us, and probably for many others, it’s a definite improvement from wrestling with unwieldy maps, or the guesswork and frustration that come when finding that you’re mapless, but needing to find the way. It seems almost magical to punch in an address and be guided, if you listen and obey, to a destination.
Not long ago, we had the occasion to completely spiritualize our sense of reliance on God’s direction.
One evening before dark, while enjoying a stretch of early spring warmth, I partially opened the front door to enjoy the fresh breezes. Our little dog, Mabel, went out onto the porch with me. I went into the house to do something, and noticing that the sun was setting and the temperature dropping, and that there wasn’t much porch time left that evening, I subsequently pulled the door closed and went inside.
Uncharacteristically and unbeknownst to me, Mabel had stepped out to enjoy the fresh fragrances of spring. About an hour later, when I called her to take a walk, I realized she was not in the house. Now it was dark, and immediately I went, along with a houseguest, searching for her—at first on foot, and then by car, but no Mabel. About an hour later, my husband arrived and also went searching for her. We left a door open on a back porch and went to bed. Filled with so much self-condemnation and fear, I slept very little.
At first light my husband again went looking for her. Later in the morning we made flyers with Mabel’s photo and put them up in the village and in a nearby village. We talked with neighbors, and all the while we prayed. At around lunchtime our daughter and grandchildren arrived, and after lunch we took a hike in the woods to call and scan the landscape for Mabel. The ground was muddy and difficult to walk on from spring run-off. We encountered a snake, brambles and thorns, and when we came to a clearing, I looked up to see hawks circling above.
Even through discouragement, God was speaking to me. Throughout this walk a prayer reverberated in my thought, “From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”
I returned home and fell into tears on my bed. Just then our houseguest came over to me and with conviction and compassion told me to go out and take another walk and not to come back until I felt certain that God was governing all Her creation, including me. I did this. I realized that the sense of discouragement from the walk in the woods came from looking in the wrong place for peace. Mentally, I had been the lost one, wandering around looking for resolution and even life in matter.
In my revised walk, I prayed for a better view. It occurred to me that Mabel was a spiritual idea, and it was her identity as idea, that I was so fond of. She had always been God’s, never dependent on me to sustain her, keep her safe, or enliven her. I realized that the qualities constituting her spiritual being do not depend on a physical place or a physical body. She does not possess the idea of “loss,” but of being. Her being is ever expressed, because God is. I reasoned that she, wherever she was, was actively expressing her individual and spiritual identity.
For instance, what I’ve observed as deftness as she ascends a staircase, she was expressing in the terrain wherever she was. Her ability to “track” her ball was still being utilized. And the intelligence she expresses in anticipating my husband’s arrival from a day at the office long before he comes through the door, is her God-given ability to perceive, to listen and respond. She was still being God’s expression, and God was truly and always caring for His ideas. I accepted that not one of us could be deprived of our position because God is constantly placing us in His kingdom.
I prayed with a favorite passage from Isaiah, “And thou shalt be called, Sought out, A city not forsaken.” During this now encouraging walk, a discussion from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures came to me in a new and comforting light: “Adhesion, cohesion, and attraction are properties of Mind.” And farther down the page, Mary Baker Eddy continues: “Spirit is the life, substance, and continuity of all things. We tread on forces. Withdraw them, and creation must collapse. Human knowledge calls them forces of matter; but divine Science declares that they belong wholly to divine Mind, are inherent in this Mind, and so restores them to their rightful home and classification.”
Still the sun went down, and no one had seen Mabel. Though our house is in a small village, it is in the mountains. It’s not uncommon to hear of bear sightings and mountain lions. These frightening images had to be dismissed in my thought over and over, and they were conquered as I understood that it was not about finding a dog; it was about finding God. I needed to see life as Life, indestructible and permanent, and forsake scenarios of fragility and vulnerability.
Late Saturday afternoon, my husband and our daughter went on an errand and decided to stop at a cottage about a mile from our house on the edge of a river. Several people in the village had recommended that we tell the woman living there about Mabel, because she is a known animal lover. When she heard we were on the lookout for Mabel, her reaction was to look at her own dog, Emily, and declare, “Emily and I will find Mabel, won’t we, Emily!” And then tumbled out of her big heart, story after story of animals found, some long after their disappearance. My husband and daughter came home full of these amusing stories, and of expectation.
With a more settled heart Sunday morning, I went to church to find the sermon meeting every need and fully answering the real questions: Is life spiritual, or does it reside in matter? Can there be confusion in divine Mind? I was hearing with more resolve that Life is spiritual, not in material forms, and that God, divine Mind, is the only Mind, clear and directive. The final hymn was indeed “the rock that was higher than I,” and I clung to the lines from it: “O’er every thought and step preside, Be Thou our guide” (Christian Science Hymnal Supplement, No. 436 ).
Though I had planned to leave the house for the city on Sunday, I decided to stay on. Mid-afternoon my husband, our houseguest, our daughter, and grandchildren left. As I was putting some clean towels away, I noticed a little bottle of shampoo I’d used on Thursday to wash Mabel.
The thought came aggressively, “You’ll never use that again. She’s gone.” I actually protested this morbid suggestion with a “No!” and went out on the front porch to pray.
I confirmed that all life is spiritual, a manifestation of divine Life, and that each of God’s ideas expresses the kind and enveloping nature of God. I affirmed that the place, the position, of God’s creatures is known to Him, and since all His ideas actually live in divine consciousness, that is where each is seen. I knew that an idea of Love could not be separated from harmony, home.
I also declared that nothing could block or obscure the ability of God’s creation to hear and respond to His voice. At that moment, filled with divine possibility, I felt peaceful, and my husband called on the phone. As we were sharing these ideas, I was looking out and saw a woman walking a little white dog. As they approached, I even noted that the dog was the same breed as Mabel.
And when they turned up the walk, I called out, “It’s Mabel!”
At once, I was in an embrace with the woman who lives in the cottage on the riverbank. She told me how she’d found our dog across the river and handing her to me said simply, “I have always wanted to do this for someone,” leaving Mabel with me on the front porch, 72 hours after the initial disappearance. My husband was included in the happy reunion via the phone that I’d flung on the couch!
God, as Shepherd, is far more to me now than the poetic metaphor I’ve always loved. God is a provable positioning power, an unmistakably reliable guide.
God is in control:
Science and Health
124:20-31