Saturday morning on my usual walk around the neighborhood, I greeted one of the neighbors. As I continued past her house, suddenly and without warning, her German shepherd attacked me. Without realizing it, I had put my arm up to protect me and found myself pulling my arm out if its mouth while she called her dog off. I wish I could say it was a friendly greeting. 

Scared, shocked, and surprised, I quickly walked away. When I got around the corner, I burst into tears and started assessing the situation. I looked at my shirt sleeve and noticed it was torn, and I had muddy paw prints on my shirt and pants. I pulled up the sleeve and didn’t see that I had been bitten through the skin.  I was thankful, but still scared and shaken. 

A few minutes later, I decided to message my friend about it, and she walked me through what I needed to do. I looked at my arm again and discovered a small skin tear and scratch mark from the dog’s teeth. She recommended I wash the area thoroughly with water. Then I went to find out who I needed to report the incident to in the neighborhood before walking down to the house to talk to the family and ask for the proof of vaccination for the dog. I am thankful someone agreed to walk down with me. I wasn’t too excited about walking back there. Unfortunately, the family had moved and seemed to have lost the recent records, but showed me several yearly records from year past. I’ll go back in ten days to make sure the dog is still spunky. If all goes well, I get to avoid getting rabies shots. After the dog attack, as I’d walk through the neighborhood in the mornings, I noticed my heart would race each time I neared the corner to the street of their house. I picked up rocks to carry, so just in case the dog came out, I would be ready. Although I knew he had never come after me when I did the full block, he did when I took the cut across by their house. I’d catch myself stepping back or being startled when other dogs, dogs I know are friendly and I like, would come up to greet me on the street. 

I’ve thought about this event over the last several days and discovered there are many things in life that come out and seem to attack me or catch me by surprise. It can be the words of a friend or colleague, the unexpected cancer diagnosis of a family member, a global pandemic, the loss of  a job, or host of other things. Some of these things can be more obvious triggers than others, but the result is the same. They can shake my confidence, cause fear, and lead me to self- protective measures because I don’t want to get hurt again. 

I’ve seen this physical event as a parallel to what happens in my spiritual life. I don’t want to let the unexpected and hurtful circumstances of my life cause me to shrink back and not walk in fullness of life. I am an image bearer of God and His warrior, but these events can make me shrink back in fear and act more like a scared dog. So here are some things I realized I can do to not be shaken and walk in the confidence I have because of my life in Christ: 

1. I can choose to forgive because I’ve been forgiven. This includes forgiving myself, those that have hurt me, and even God. 
2. I choose to forgive again and again because He forgave me and calls me to forgive others as well. 
3. I choose to identify the areas in my life where I’ve picked up the rocks or kept away in attempt to protect myself. I choose to replace those things with the truth of God’s word. 
4. I choose to walk in wisdom and faith.  Dogs may come out and try to attack me again when I walk, but I can do the following:
   1. Avoid those areas if the risk is significant enough to warrant that or until the circumstances have changed. 
   2. Prepare myself with the tools to ward off the dog, if needed. I’ve learned, at least in Guatemala, stopping and standing your ground without looking them in the eyes often works and or throwing some rocks will send them away and I can pass by. 
   3. Choose not to let one dog’s aggressiveness cause me to walk in fear of the others. There are dogs all over Guatemala. I don’t want to let them keep me from going to the places I need to go to teach others and work with them in providing the basic therapy services people with disabilities need. 

I’d love to hear from you. Do you have any dogs in your life that are trying to scare you or have attacked you? What are you doing to not live in fear and self protection but in fullness of life?