A Dead Calm

I was listening to A Simple Pause app, Imagine. A practice where the listener immerses themselves into scripture. This particular Imagine was titled, Peace Be Still…the story of Jesus sleeping in a boat when a violent storm came. 

   I pictured myself getting into the boat with Jesus and His disciples. Crossing the lake with them.

   The storm came. He was sleeping, while everyone else was panicked. 

“On that day, when evening came, Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Let’s go across to the other side of the lake.’  So after leaving the crowd, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat, and other boats were with him. Now a great windstorm developed and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was nearly swamped. But he was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion.  They woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, don’t you care that we are about to die?’”

Mark 4:35-38 NET

The narrator asked,

“Notice the disciples. What are they doing?”

“Does the noise of the wind drown their voices?”

“What is your reaction as the waters fill the boat?”

“Where do you see yourself in the boat?”

“What are you doing?”

 “Are you praying?” 

“Are you bailing water?” 

“Are you paralyzed by fear?”…

 “So he got up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, 

‘Be quiet! Calm down!’ 

Then the wind stopped,

and it was dead calm.”

Mark 4:39 NET (emphasis mine).

Then the narrator posed a question I couldn’t answer:

“What does a dead calm feel like?”

I wouldn’t find the answer until a week later.

*****

Last fall, I wrote, the steps that remain about my sweet, aging husky, Mya.  

Even though she’d slowed down quite a bit, she was still happily walking every day and, she was still getting into mischief.

Like months earlier, when she got a treat stuck in her the back of her gum and we rushed her to the vet for extraction. Or when she got her paw caught in the dog bowl holder—screaming and crying until David freed her. 

Every incident, I was a mess. I would shut down, frozen with fear. It was so uncharacteristic of me.  I’m a doer. But when it came to my Mya, I freaked out. She’s the one dog that was completely mine. And I was her hooman. She walked me through my darkest days. 

Her main gifting was healing hearts through song. When she first joined our family, her first “patient” was Zorro. He’d just lost our female husky. So Mya thought it best for Zorro to howl through his grief. She’d get him howling with her, then she’d switch to a super annoying, high-pitched bark as if to say, “Louder! Belt it out!” He would howl from the gut. She was satisfied.

She did this with each of us over the years as we needed to “sing” through our trials. Most recently she helped our newest family member, Maverick find his voice.

We all howled with miss Mya. And it did make us feel better.

A couple of nights ago, she got up in the middle of the night, super anxious.

I thought she had to potty. When that didn’t help, I gave her some food. 

PLEASE BE HUNGRY.

Denial turns its head from the truth.

She scarfed. I exhaled.

But her anxiety didn’t subside.

She was always an anxious dog, but this was different.

I woke up David. “Mya is acting weird.”
He got up and studied her.

“Do you see it? 

“Yes, she’s not acting like herself. She’s panting and pacing faster than normal.”

David confirmed with the emergency vet that they were open and I changed my clothes. 

And then it happened. 

In that moment in the closet, I couldn’t articulate what had come over me. I wasn’t acting like a nutjob.
It was as if I was in the boat with Jesus when he spoke the words,
Peace. 
Be. 
Still. 
I felt an unexplainable supernatural peace.

I whispered, “This is what a dead calm feels like.”  
The Bible calls it the peace beyond all understanding. 

We took her for her final car ride. She seemed to know relief was on the way. 
And just like that, she was gone. That little husky puppy that came to me so long ago—with her crooked white widows peak that stole my heart. Miss Mya passed peacefully. My head buried in hers, our faces shared my tears.

No tired steps remain. I imagine now there’s leaping, running and singing once again.

Even though I’m riding the waves of grief, it brings solace to know that she died with all her songs sung.

Thank you, little Bean for teaching each of us how to sing. We are still howling without our conductor. Now you get to worship face-to-face. 

   “Alas, for those that never sing, but die with all their music in them!” Oliver Wendell Homes

A Simple Pause App. Imagine, Peace Be Still.