No Small Thing

I’m not a dog person.

At least, I’m not the kind of dog person who isn’t bothered by dog hair, drool and that smell in their house.

I literally hate all of that.

Plot twist: I have a 90lb dog who brings all of this (and more!) into my life.

When I was seriously considering getting a Great Dane, I knew it would be a lot of work.

I watched hours of research and training videos. I read everything I could think of to get prepared. I was going to be the perfect dog owner.

And then we brought Billie home.

One week into having her, I couldn’t get the thought out of my head: “What was I thinking?!”

(Note: I did not stop having this thought for months. MONTHS.)

Here I was grappling with serious mental and physical health issues, a full time stay at home parent with two small children and a spouse who was gone nearly all the time while grappling with the implosion of a close personal relationship.

It was not the right time for a puppy.

It was exactly what I needed.

In the past during time of stress, my go-to reaction has been to shut down, let the kids watch too much TV and do the bare minimum necessary to get by.

Thanks to therapy, I don’t feel shame about that. It’s just a fact; how I had to cope to survive. And it taught me a lot about what to better the next time I was asked to walk through a dark valley.

And this time, for whatever reason, I thought a puppy would be a good idea.

And it was a good idea!

Just not an easy one.

In case you weren’t aware, puppies are not like small children. They do not give you breaks by watching TV for an hour or two. They do not play with Lego Bricks independently for large portions of the day. Heck, they don’t even wear diapers.

No, puppies are adorable harbingers of stress, chaos and rage-inducing antics. They’re armed with needle teeth and tiny bladders. They’re actively trying to kill themselves with zero cognitive reasoning and a insatiable desire to ingest unsafe objects. They’re an apocalypse of sleeplessness and weird smells and you better hunker down and get through it or you just might not make it out alive.

This is hyperbole of course.

Kind of.

Billie forced me (with weeping and gnashing of teeth) to get into a strict routine. With her being the size she would be as an adult, she could become a dangerous liability if I didn’t train her from day one, every day. No exceptions.

I hated it. I dreaded going to sleep because I knew how much extra work I would have with her the next day. I wanted to give up.

And then, I didn’t. All of the sudden, I was actually looking forward to her routines and how active it made me every day.

She started to feel like less of a chore and more of an accomplishment I was getting prouder of by the day.

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Next month, I turn 33.

I was editing that picture up there today and felt my throat get scratchy with emotion.

I’m proud of that woman.

She went through a personal hell last year and, by God’s grace, is emerging on the other side (mostly) intact with the massive accomplishment of having trained her dream dog in the thick of it.

All while showing up for her husband, her kids, weekly therapy, and running a home.

I keep wanting to shove it off as a small thing, but it isn’t. It’s God’s grace in action.

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Billie has brought more work, hair and stress than I ever planned for into my life. It’s still hard every day.

I may never be the type of dog person who isn’t bothered by that but I have become a stronger person because of my dog.

And that’s no small thing.

As Good A Time As Any

Kentucky is green again.

Our property is teeming with honeysuckle and blackberry blossoms. The last of the Spring rains having been dumping in fitful bursts one minute only to have the sun flirting through newborn leaves the next.

Thanks to a puppy brought home last year, I’m walking outside every day now. I hear bluejays, chickadees, killdeer, red-wingback birds and woodpeckers in a ceaseless cacophony. There’s yellow finch nest in one of our cedar trees and, always overhead, the silent black-feathered vultures riding the updrafts that spiral into the sky out of our valley.

We still only have one car so leaving the house isn’t happening enough for my mental health. I’m staying busy, but you can only do so much at home before home starts to feel like the one place you can’t relax anymore.

My babies are kids now. They use the bathroom (mostly) independently. They can make themselves snacks and clean up their messes. They cannot regulate their emotions yet. This is normal of course, but it doesn’t make it any less exhausting.

I am still needed a lot.

My favorite part of the day is when everyone is asleep and my bed finally welcomes me back at 11pm where I lay awake in the dark. The sacredness of stillness is something my body sometimes needs more than sleep.

I’m spending too much time at the social media buffet and my brain feels bloated. I feel like I don’t have an independent thought. My head is buzzy and irritated. And so I came here to this old, faithful blog.

I wish in my vanity I had some rich, pithy statement to wow the masses about the state of world. I would dearly love to stun readers of my work with how well I articulated some truth or revelation. I’m not proud of this, but I think admitting it to myself (and I suppose to you) is the best place to start extracting the poison of it from my creative work.

I post regularly on social media because I can usually get a gratifyingly quick response. A like, a comment, a view, a DM. It feels good to work on something, share it publicly and BAM! start receiving feedback—even a lack of feedback is somehow a motivator to try again tomorrow. The more I think about it, the more it feels like working a slot machine. Sometimes, you win. Sometimes you don’t. But what gets you addicted is the shallow thrill of trying, again and again and again.

I’m fighting that by sharing in this slow, quiet space. Not because I want to—I’m not there yet. But because I want to want to, if that make sense.

I plan writing every day over the next month. Some of it will land here. Some of it will land in your inbox (sign up here for that!) and some of it will land in hidden places where God only needs to see.

I’m also planning on exploring mini-vlogs via TikTok. I’ve posted a few there already and love the challenge of expressing my work in that format. I’m @breanne.rodgers there if you’re interested.

The past two years spun my head into knots and I’m aching to sit somewhere green with a blue sky overhead and talk real slow about how to undo some of them. This blog will have to do for now. Join me?

I said I would start this in June but I figured today was as good a day as any.

End of August Update

At the beginning of August, I had plans.

I decided I would delete Instagram for the whole month. 90% of my work and research is funneled through that funny little app, which means it take up a lot of my day to be active on there.

This isn’t necessarily a good or bad thing, it’s just a thing; a fact. And one I needed to reevaluate. I don’t like all my eggs being in the basket of an app I don’t own or have control over.

I figured all the extra time I’d have off Instagram would afford me more mental and emotional energy to pour into long-form writing. Namely, this personal blog and my email list.

Narrator: she did not have more mental and emotional energy for anything.

I was trying to use August as month to rest my way. I thought I could rest and still be productive. I thought I could take a break from constant writing, while still writing every day. I thought I could take a needed step back from hustle and still making progress by the world’s definitions.

But now, I’m sitting here sipping on the last of August days with September knocking at the door and realizing I wasn’t able to do any of that.

I didn’t write any emails. In fact, I barely wrote at all. I didn’t touch or even look at my planners one time. I’m entering September with less creative work prepared than when I started this month.

Instead, I went to therapy every week. I had a long conversation with my doctor about the significant changes I have to my to my lifestyle to combat the effects of PMDD. I got a new haircut paid for by one of my sisters with an appointment that another sister gave up for me. I witnessed God answer a year long prayer request in such a specific way that my mind is still reeling from it. I finished reading Black Beauty with my kids and introduced them to the 1995 movie adaption of it. I ran away for two nights with just my husband to a tiny house in Asheville, NC for our 10 year anniversary.

I rested.

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I decided to take the month of August off for many reasons. Mainly because our family has spent the last 8 months wrestling through one stressful circumstance after another. As a result, our mental/emotional/spiritual/physical capacity was basically at zero.

What I’m grappling with now is just how extensively Jonathan and I needed to rest in order to gain our footing and keep our family moving forward.

If I don’t look at August 2021 through the lens of Scriptural truth, it’s easy to see this past month as a flop. I didn’t accomplish anything visible. No back log of completed written projects. No neatly lined published blog posts and sent emails. No check marks in my planners.

But when I shift my perspective to God’s truth, I see where this month has taught me lessonsI don’t want to forget. I learned to accept help; to use my weaknesses as fuel to run to God, to rest in His timing and not my ability to work hard.

I learned for a follower of God, plans are meant to be held loosely.

Lord help me to keep my hands open, receiving Your grace.