Sashi, a malamute-wolf-huskie mix,* entered our lives in 2024. She’s the sweetest dog ever! She never barks. She tells us she’s sad by howling when we leave and she can’t come along.

Her only flaw is that she and our cat don’t get along… but that may be more his fault than hers.

And she loves to leave deposits all around our back yard. My OCD side would love it if she did her deed in one narrowly defined corner to make cleanup easier. But that’s not the way dogs work. She’s not being bad when she chooses to deposit all over the yard in seemingly random places. Maybe she’s expressing a design that only she and God know about!

Similarly, God gives us the freedom to make choices. He knows it would be better for Him and for us if we always made choices that please Him. But God doesn’t want robots.

Our lives are an unknowable weave of things going according to His plan and our sometimes bad choices. I am thankful that I don’t have to make sense of this mix. God continues to love us through it all.

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* We never got a DNA test. I figure that Sashi will love us no matter what percentage of each breed she is.

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Paul Merrill writes here every first Friday.

Sashi posed while sticking her tongue out. She was wordlessly commenting on the folly of her masters.