Baby be still

Today I pulled a tick of my dog Lucy.

It was no small feat. Ticks make me squeamish – as in very very squeasmish – and I usually cringe and whine when I see them.

But Lucy had a tick on her, and as her loving mother, I was not going to let it remain on MY baby.

I found it when I was holding her and we were spending time together. Our time together was interrupted by the presence of not just a little tick, but a very plump, swollen tick. If they’ve been on their host for a while, I’ll spare you the details, but it’s absolutely disgusting.

So I held her down and tried to grab it but she fought me. She scratched me and tried to run from me. She struggled with all her might despite my pleading. “Baby be still,” I said in the manner I usually address her, about 3 octaves (rough estimate lol – I’m not a music person) higher than my normal voice. She knows my voice, and for a few seconds she was calm just long enough for me to extract the grossness that had been attached for her for who knows how long.

Then, instead of thanking me, she ran away and hid under the dinning room table and pouted – and gave me the “I am less-than-pleased-with-you face.”

I was struck by how we humans respond very similarly to Lucy, or at least I do.

Often, time with God gets interrupted because we have sin in our lives that as a loving Father and a perfectly pure being, he can’t ignore. So, since we have invited him into our lives and told him we want him to help us to know him and be more like him, and he cannot tolerate impurity in His beloved, he does what’s best for us – extracting what’s draining the life out of us and tainting our lives. He is disgusted by our sin and wants to eradicate it from our lives, but like the ticks, sometimes we don’t even notice it’s there, so when he tries to remove it we get uncomfortable and angry. We think, ow God that hurt, was that necessary? Why would you hurt me if you love me? When you pull off a tick, it even itches for many days because the ticks stick you with a numbing chemical, so when there’re gone, it’s pretty irritating. But wouldn’t you much rather be tick-free and itchy than be a host for parasites? Um duh.

One of my favorite Bible verses is Psalm 46:10 – be still and know that I am God. We can rest in the Savior’s arms even when we don’t understand, even when we think he is hurting us – we can trust he knows what’s best for us.

Lucy could trust me because she knew my voice – it was the voice of the one who loved her – just as we can trust God’s voice and direction even if we don’t recognize where he’s calling us, because it’s the voice of the one who loves us, like how John describes the Good Shepherd in John 10:2-5 ---

The man who enters by the gate is the shepherd of his sheep. The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger's voice.

Baby be still. He’s got ya.