MERCY

Our family grew! About a month ago, we added a second dog to our home— a little pug. We named her Mercy. The meaning behind her name is three-fold. 1) When my kids were a bit younger, they loved Kate DiCamillo’s sweet book series about a quirky couple with a pet pig named Mercy Watson. Pugs are pretty pig-like, so it just worked. 2) Psalm 23 says, “surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life” and boy, does Mercy follow us around everywhere! And, 3) Lord, have mercy! This pup is something else!

This might seem like a funny, inconsequential post, simply announcing something as run-of-the-mill as getting a new dog. But to me, the last month has been the sweetest reminder of God’s kindness toward us and His care for the tiniest details of our lives. Stay with me ‘til the end— I will tie this into how God is working in our lives!

Daniel and I both grew up with dogs as a big part of our childhood, and from the time we started dating, we knew we would want to have dogs in our future home. Less than a year after we got married, we adopted Pippin the pug and he truly was our first baby. He was a central figure in our newlywed phase and we loved and doted upon him, as our phones’ camera rolls can attest. Pippin ushered us from the newlywed phase into the new parent stage as we welcomed our human babies into the world. He was there as we brought each of our three children home and he is woven through some of their earliest memories. Pippin brought so much joy into our lives and to me, he will always symbolize one of the sweetest seasons of our life. 

After Shep was born, life started to spiral for us. We had three kids, 3 years old and under, that depended on us for just about everything. We were in the throes of genetic testing, lab work, and assessments to gain an explanation for Shep’s developmental delays. Not long after Shep’s first birthday, we got his diagnosis and we began the grieving process all over again. Sleep-deprived, grieving, and overwhelmed, I was in the trenches of depression and felt like there was simply too much on my plate. 

Pippin, the dog we’d adored for 8 years, began to feel like more of a burden than a blessing in that season. With three young children to care for, we did not have the ability to care for Pip like we once had. We made the painful, but necessary decision to re-home him. Graciously, my brother and his partner offered to take Pippin for us and we couldn’t be more grateful that he got to stay in the family. Pippin lived out his remaining few years being loved and cared for by family that had known him all along. We were so, so thankful. 

We grieved saying goodbye to Pippin. Not just because he was a dog we loved, but also because we felt that we were saying goodbye to a whole chapter of our life–a sweet, joyful, easy season that we look back on so fondly. After Pip, Daniel and I weren’t sure we’d ever get another dog. While in the trenches, we could not imagine being in a space where we would have the capacity to care for an “extra” living being beyond our kids. 

Less than two years ago, when Shep was 4, we began entertaining the idea of getting another dog. The dust had settled a bit and we desperately wanted to give our kids the sweet childhood experience of owning a dog, even if it meant making life more complicated for us. We took the plunge and adopted our labrador puppy, Indie. We love our Indie dearly, but I will say that the first year of puppyhood with her was ROUGH. Her energy, size, and destructive tendencies had me questioning on multiple occasions if we had done the right thing in bringing a puppy home. 

By the grace of God, we made it through the toughest patch and I can thankfully say that Indie has turned a big corner and we love having her in our family. She is the biggest scaredy-cat, odd duck of a dog I’ve ever met, and is probably the only lab who’s terrified of water—but we love our goofy girl. She has brought out a tenderness in Harrison we’d never seen before and she is such a playful companion for our energetic boy. 

We haven’t even made it to the 2 year mark of having a dog again, but for some reason we got the hair-brained idea to add another one to the mix. We were really hoping to find a dog that would be a special buddy for Poppy, who is honestly more interested in having someone to snuggle with than play with. 

We were really hesitant to start over with a puppy, so we hoped to find a dog that was a little bit older. We began scouring Craigslist, adoption websites, and humane societies. Unfortunately, none of the dogs available were what we were looking for in terms of breed, size, age, etc. But one morning, I refreshed my Craigslist search for the hundredth time, and up popped a post for an 8-month-old, female pug who was being rehomed because her owners worked full-time and she was home alone too much. By the time I had copied the phone number and sent it to Daniel, the post had been flagged and removed. 

We called immediately and were told that we were already second in line. Daniel told the owners that we were extremely interested, explained how we are a home-schooling family that is home a lot, and that we are former pug owners with a major soft spot for the breed. The owners called Daniel back within a couple of hours, told him the pup was ours if we wanted her, and said we could come get her that afternoon. 

Daniel and I are not typically parents of the spontaneous variety, so I never thought we’d have the opportunity to surprise our kids with a dog—but that’s exactly what we did, and man, was it fun! I’ll never forget the look on my kids’ faces when Daniel walked in with a new dog in his arms. 

Mercy has been the sweetest addition to our family. Little Miss Personality took our home by storm and acts like she’s always lived here. She is sweet, sassy, smart, and snuggly. Mercy is an extreme extrovert and likes to spend every second of her day cuddled up with the closest living being she can find. Poppy simply can’t get enough of her and carries her around like she’s her own little baby. Mercy has been sweet and gentle with Shep, and she makes Harrison laugh every day with her quirky personality. We all adore her!

It has been so fun to watch Indie and Mercy together as well. It took about 12 hours for Mercy to establish herself as the alpha dog and it is pure comedy to watch her run the show and boss around a dog about 6 times her size. The girls act like sisters as they alternate between wrestling, playing tug of war, and snuggling together. Mercy does not give Indie an inch of personal space and is often found sneaking into Indie’s kennel with her and curling up right against her. They are polar opposites in looks, size, and personality, and they couldn’t make a funnier pair. They have been so much fun!

The icing on the cake is that Mercy came to us crate-trained and mostly potty-trained. Thank you, Lord! She hasn’t shown destructive tendencies and really only chews on her toys, not furniture. We feel so spoiled that we got her with the hardest part of the puppy phase being largely behind her, and feel grateful that of our three dogs, bringing Mercy home has been the easiest transition. I’m telling you, getting an 8-month-old puppy rather than an 8-week-old puppy is where it’s at! 

All that rambling about our dog stories is to lead me to the point of: God has been kind to us. God hears our prayers even for “silly things” like wanting a new dog. It was clear to us that God orchestrated the details of us finding Mercy–through the unlikelihood of us seeing a post that was live for less than 45 minutes, to us finding a breed that we love that is simply not as common in Idaho as it was in California. These weren’t prayers for essentials like our daily bread or mortgage payment–this was an extra. And still, God blessed us with a “yes”. 

To me, the tale of the Miller dogs has a beautiful redemptive arc to it. There has been loss and goodbyes, but there has also been restoration. God restored our ability to own dogs again. He’s brought us into a stable enough place where we could say “yes” to our kids for a request that seems so normal for most families. This is something we never take for granted as our family’s limitations often lead to more “no’s” than yes’s.” God has also restored to me the joy of dog ownership, which was something I lost completely in my darkest season. Owning a dog, for a time, simply felt like a burden too big to bear, and graciously God has allowed me, not just my kids, to experience the joy of having dogs in our home again. 

I’ve just felt very thankful over the last month and I thought I would share that joy with those of you who have been following along with our family’s journey. I try to be candid and open about our trials and losses, but I also want to publicly give God the praise He deserves for His abundant kindness as well. We may have long seasons of loss in life, but our God also has been known to restore the years that the locusts have eaten (see Joel 2:25 and Job 42). This season has been a taste of restoration for our family, and we are resting with gratitude in that place.