Murphy. And Possibility.

We have a new family member and are remembering how three pounds of Yorkshire terrier creates a very large ripple. Meet our boy, Murphy! He measures six inches to the top of his shoulders and at ten months, he’s not going to get much larger. (The camera angle in this photo makes him look much bigger. Trust me. He’s tiny.)

My morning routine looks a bit different for the time being. I rise at the same time and carry the crate where he’s slept out of the bedroom with me, leaving Gerry and Maya to slumber on.

”Good morning. buddy!” I whisper as I set the crate on the dryer in the laundry room and reach in to get the tiny squirming boy.

I carry him downstairs, step into the boots I left waiting at the back door, and shrug into my jacket. I turn the light on and take him out to the “potty pen” we set up for him.

“Go potty, Murphy.” I bed down and gently set him down in it.

He looks up at me with those big (relatively) pools of Yorkie eyes and obliges. I heap praise, give him a tiny treat, and we go back into the warm house.

Soon, we’re settled together in the den. He’s wrapped in a blanket with his tiny head resting on my chest as he falls back to sleep, and I’m sipping coffee and praying.

It’s awkward to manage my Bible and journal with a sleeping pup in my arms, so I reach for my iPad and call up a couple of apps: Pray As You Go and Lectio 365.  Music and scripture reading, prayer and space in which to ponder. When the daily selections are finished I sit quietly and linger in divine conversation.

This morning I’m pondering possibility. In light of our world turned upside down this year, and no sign of returning to what was anytime soon, if ever, what if I changed my thinking and shifted from lament (though there’s good reason to do so and a purpose to it) toward possibility?

It’s something I’ve been ruminating on for months and something in the prayer this morning solidified it. This season is fat with possibility and opportunity to find fresh ways of being. Yes, change chafes, but it’s also a time of renewal—if we allow it.

For now the routine of my morning quiet time—and life as it once was in the larger way of being in this world where a pandemic and politics rage—is, of necessity, different. It will, in all likelihood, not look like it once did ever again.

Enter possibility.

It’s a season to learn to embrace it. Learn how to bend, lest we break. Find new ways of doing things. Do new things. Let go. Listen. Feel fresh wind on our faces and turn toward it.

This blanket wrapped pup sleeping on my chest has turned my ordered world topsy turvy and helped remind me that sometimes it takes letting go of what was in order to find something new. I’ve felt the discomfort of transition for a long time, even before early March when stuff got real in terms of change. I look at Murphy’s tiny sleeping head and smile. It’s good. It’s time.