This weekend, we celebrated our fifth anniversary.
And we celebrated in a way that I must admit I wouldn't have expected we would have. Looking back, I probably would have expected a more extravagant vacation, even a weekend trip somewhere.
Instead, we decided to camp on our land.
And it was perfect.
The picture of our fifth anniversary wasn't as awesome as the one on our third, when we were at the top of Pike's Peak in Colorado. However, I love this picture. We're in T-shirts, and our tent is in the background. We are comfortable. We are outdoorsy. We are ourselves. We are in a place where reside our hopes for the future.
It's truly the perfect picture of our fifth anniversary.
While we were camping, our dog was doing what she does best, eating sweet grass. She loves it. She goes outside our house sometimes just to eat the fast-growing grass that isn't caught by the lawnmower due to the cement blocks surrounding our garden. She ate and ate and ate it on the land.
Then she ate breakfast.
Then she threw up.
She had the courtesy to walk away, and she threw up twice, all of her breakfast and all of the grass she had eaten but not chewed.
We told her to stay away from it, and she longingly looked at the pile of disgusting throw up. She layed down with a sad look and just stared at it.
When she thought we weren't looking, she moseyed over and started licking it, not stopping when we told her to until Nate gave her a little swat on the behind.
She walked away but continued to look at it.
At one point, she even walked about 20 feet away, around the lawn mower and then came back the other side.
"What is she doing?" Nate asked.
"I think she's trying to act like she's not going back to the throw up but she is."
Which she was.
She made her way back to the pile of puke and started licking it up again.
We finally put a bucket over it, so she wouldn't be tempted but she could smell and still pawed at it a bit before she gave up.
It was like watching the human race. All I could think of was the verse in Proverbs that says, "As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly."
How many times has God watched me look longingly at my sin and seen a disgusting mess that he can't imagine why I would want it? How many times has he scolded me not to return and had to punish me when I have? How many times have I sauntered around acting like I'm not going to sin, trying to fool Him and myself then moving toward my sin again? How many times has he had to pull me away, put a barrier up and I still try to get what I want?
It's disgusting when you think about it. Why do I want vomit? Why do I want trash? Why do I want something that useless?
Like a dog to its vomit. Think of that next time sin is looking enticing.
