The Good Life

This time last year I was licking my wounds a few days post-breakup and making the quasi-ridiculous decision to buy a house (again, folks, buy a new pair of shoes as retail therapy, not a house). The rest of 2014 unfolded quickly, buying my little plot of happiness in South Minneapolis, high fiving myself for reattaching cabinet doors post-painting, and settling into my first winter as a home owner. Despite the somewhat ill-advised impetus for purchasing this house, it has been nothing but a blessing since last fall. I love every quirky inch of it, even the sidewalk that's going to cost me a pretty penny to replace, even the fire alarm that mistakes a steamy shower for a life-threatening blaze. This house has made Minneapolis a home.

But I didn't know how much more of a home it would become with another beating heart inside these stucco walls. Little Debbie is six years old, a rescue I adopted almost exactly a month ago.  She's, by best guess, a mixture of basset hound and lab, and is thus a healthy mix of lazy (basset) and playful (lab). Her little butt wiggles with joy when I get home after work and she's perfectly content squeezing in between the couch cushions, tummy in the air, while I watch TV.

She tucks herself under my arm whenever I'm sitting somewhere she can snuggle into, and she thumps her tail like a drum on these hardwood floors when I'm spending too long on the computer and not paying her enough attention. The clickety-clack of her nails on the floor, her whine if I close the bathroom door in her face, the thump of her tail against my not-long-for-this-world Ikea lamp, they're noises I didn't know this house was missing.  And now that they're there, it's hard to imagine a home without her small and mighty self.

I'm infrequently frustrated by my singleness. I, of course, expected to be married by now. But, honestly, the failed delivery on that expectation has not caused me as much heartache as I think a younger me would have imagined. The fullness of my life always astonishes me, because it is so much richer than I deserve. And even in moments of great contentedness, I'm overwhelmed by how much joy God continues to delivers into my life. And Little Debbie is just one such joy, a happy, loving example of what it means to rest in the simplest things. A good walk, a good meal, a good belly scratch. You're right, little girl, it's a good, good life.