The Princess and the Poo

As I reluctantly reached for the pooper scooper, and gingerly moved toward the dark mounds littering the grass of a yard that was not mine. I fought back the imagery that was so clearly before my eyes, the idea of what I was about to do, needed to do, and was doing, all for the sake of money. That green stuff we have all come to know and love, the “secure option”, the paper we exchange for goods and services.

As I neared the first mound that badly needed scooping, with breath appropriately held, and mind focused on the deserted island that I was yet to experience in this lifetime. I desperately tried to scoop the poop as quickly and artfully as I could, all the while working the blatant and relentless littered imagery before my eyes off of my pristine white beach with aqua water caressing her shores. Of course, all this without exhaling or fainting with my face in the middle of a mud pie. It was at this point I noticed the brown mound form a life of it’s own. Yup, it moved…. “Huh?” “What the….?” “Dammit!” I mumbled, as I lost my record for breath holding, my beautiful beach faded into the distance while the mound beneath my eyes seemed to grow in proportion.

Like something from an old sci-fi horror movie, not only did this mound grow, the movement within it increased as my stomach caught my throat. They were maggots, bugs even, and worms crawling within this mound of Dog dung……..”ooooohhhhh delightful!” Yup the mound was alive with crawling creatures who’s sole purpose was to find a nice warm, moist home to breed, eat and live. As the nausea and dizzy head brought me back to reality, I quickly and desperately took in a breath and stopped immediately as the strong odor found it’s way through my nostrils, highlighting every sensory action in my body………. “OH MY GOSH!” I gagged, and ran for the safety of the court yard, puffing and panting, and trying to force any vision I could over what I had just witnessed. Breathing deeply and talking the nausea out of my throat.
I burst into tears and my spirit shouted out of my mouth for freedom. Freedom from a cage I had clearly placed myself in.

So how did I find myself shoveling other peoples Dog doo for a living. I didn’t, somewhere I chose this. I chose to walk down a path that led me to this place over the Festive Season while others donned their new polka dot bikini’s, slathered their bodies with fresh tropical coconut scented suntan lotion and headed off to those island holidays with palm trees swaying in the cool ocean breeze, while those clear sparkling waves refreshed not only their bodies but revived their work weary souls. I chose to use what I thought a good opportunity to make the money we so desperately needed at this time to pay our bills, and offered my services to feed, water and care for these same peoples’ pets.

Oh when I designed my pretty little pamphlet with pastel colors and cute cartoon characters, it seemed so arty at the time. When I envisioned the feeding of these pets, it seemed so quick, the cash seemed so easy and the focus of the money pouring in kept my momentum and belief of what I believed to be a “God idea” going strong. I was a woman on a mission. I finally had a plan to bring in some cash, there was a need out there and I was going to meet it. We had reached a desperate place in our finances, where beggars could clearly not be choosers. I couldn’t say I was too good for this, I needed to do what I needed to do to keep the roof over our heads. I believed that God saw this as a worthy cause and perhaps would even congratulate me for being so industrious. A “Well done Kid!” “God helps those who help themselves, and you have now earned my favour” blah blah blah!

Anyway, back to my spirit shouting out of my mouth at the sight of low, low, lower than I realized I could go. Something broke inside of me as I shouted out to God. I shouted, but not in an angry or arrogant, demanding way, not even from the place of the bitter victim I had so clearly been representing for so long, and not even from the desperate pleading place to an unfair God that refused to change my circumstances, but rather from a REAL place. A place of truth within me that I had abandoned so long ago. A truth that I know was written on my heart at the beginning of creation, popped out of nowhere, yet out of somewhere and shouted loud enough for the freedom and victory it knew it needed to claim.

So did God miraculously intervene and beam me from the doggie doo strewn yard to my Seychelles beach? Nope. Yet something DID change inside me that day, a hope rose in my heart for the person I am to be, the person I’ve crushed and whipped into submission for all the “bad” choices. This person was allowed to stick their heads out of the black prison for a brief moment of sunshine, and hope rose again.

“I am allowed to feel free, I am allowed to want this freedom, and all because the sentence I am trying to serve has already been served.” Those words resonated through me and my beaten, broken and imprisoned heart began to loosely and weakly grasp at the concept of someone higher having already paid this price for this bad decision. Visions of the cross flooded my mind, but my religious brain told me that Jesus didn’t waste His precious blood on my bad decisions. That His cross experience actually had limitations, and that my stupid choices couldn’t possibly be included in something as holy and sacred as Jesus dying that vicious death on that awful cross. That his dying was only for serious sins that really needed it. That my silly antics in this world, my Kamikaze maneuvers through life are wasteful of His precious sacrifice…..

Yet, my heart was flooded with the hope and the gentle touch I had just received from the very person that hung on that cross. The hope was too strong, the experience too rich, and no amount of self doubt and persecution could drown that out this time. My Jesus had just stepped down and reminded me once again that when He saved me, He saved me from EVERYTHING I will ever need saving from. That included my stupid financial mistakes that led me down the path of self destruction to finally finding myself intimately acquainted with a dog’s toilet.

I left this house with a spring in my step I had not experienced in years, there was a weightlessness about my walk from there on out. No, my circumstances didn’t change immediately, as a matter of fact I still had to go back to my overcrowded house full of visiting family over the Christmas season, I had to continue to interact with their hopeless views on life, and I had to continue the next day to do the pet run morning and night which entailed more fly and worm infested dog poop. Yet the hope was there. The creator of the universe had spoken to little ‘ol dog poop scooping me, and now all that was needed was for me to nurture my encounter and meditate on it in the midst of all that was shouting against it this time. To allow it to surface, and dare I say survive this time.