You ever have those dreams where you have to run from something, but your legs just can’t cooperate because in reality you’re laying in bed and they just don’t want to move? Well those are nightmares for me, and last night I had a similar experience.
Except, I wasn’t trying to run.
I was trying to scream…and I couldn’t.

I had a dream last night about my dog. You see, a couple of weeks ago my mom had to put our family poodle, blacky, to sleep. It was a decision she struggled with for a while, but in the end she’s sure that she made the right one.

Well, in this dream I got to see him again, but the circumstances were a little strange. You know, the way dreams make their own decisions sometimes about something. Well here he had been given a shot, the same one to put him to sleep, but it was something that was supposed to take a week to effect him, and he would go peacefully in his sleep or something. So we were at home…or some home…and he was laying with my Aunt Wanda and I was just passing through. My mom was there too, but it’s another weird thing about my Aunt, because she’s also passed without my being there.

As I passed through, I decided to give my dog a hug, and I started to break down because of the thought of him leaving. My Aunt started to console me, but it was at that moment that Blacky started to wimper; not because he was sad, but because he was hurting. It was faint at first, but as I started to move him it quickly raised to that of like a siren.

I couldn’t stand it.
I yelled out “He’s hurting!”

Because of the shot he had been given before, I concluded. It was too much to handle.

I tried to lay my hands on him to control him, all the while his cries were in the background, and all I wanted was for his pain to stop.

Clenching my eyes shut, I did something that I knew was more than a dream, I could feel my subconscious taking over.

Now, I can admit now that I’m not the biggest man of Faith. That metaphor about having the Faith of a mustard seed? That applies to me. When it comes to me and prayers about sickness, it’s really hard for me to get those prayers out without a sense of doubt on whether the ailness will be cured or not.

But here, at this moment, without hesitation, almost as if I could gather up all the Faith possible from within that room, I prayed. Yelling only three words at the top of my lungs…

“Stop it God.”

It was a command for him to stop the pain, not me blaming him for it, but as the third word was forming on my lips…I woke up. Out of breath and completely stunned.
I believe I actually said, out loud in reality, those two words; a sure sign that I wasn’t kidding around when I wanted his pain to stop…right then and there.

Immediately, I knew I had to write this down, because obviously I have something I need to say here that I don’t want to forget.
And I could probably, by all accounts, conclude with some wise words about my own Faith, mustard seeds, or anything else of that nature…and maybe even apply it to Faith in general in a way that can possibly enlighten my fellow friends and family, or the few people that actually read this blog.
But I don’t think that’s what the dream was about.
There was no epiphany…no revelation about the inner workings of Faith and it’s constant battle with the rationality of the human mind. Instead, I woke up with only one very clear thought in my mind.

What I really want to say here is very simple:

I miss
My dog.