drinking dog water

ok so after yesterday's post telling the many
adventures of my 13 month old son's daily routine,
today was a new adventure. we also have two dogs
in our family. dodger is our 75 lb golden retriever. he
is 12 1/2. and, angel is our 25 lb beagle. she is
3 1/2. Here is a familiar scene in our home of them
sharing their water bowl. its pretty sweet. i took this
picture several months ago. the date on this picture is
wrong.












the toilet was not jacob's interest today. he found a new interest. what is it with my little son? longing
to play in the filth of a toilet and now drinking with
the dogs? i think he was just another object lesson
sent from God to me today.



after i ran to get my camera to take this shot, laughing alot because i thought it was so cute, i told jacob, "no, no, jacob! we don't get our drink where the doggies do. we drink from a clean sippie cup." and, i picked up the dog bowl, so he couldn't go back to it and handed him his sippie cup. he gladly took it because i don't think he was really able to get much from the dog bowl anyway and he was thirsty.

this funny incident reminded me of a time a couple of years ago when i was getting ready to go somewhere and i was in a hurry, as usual. dodger, my golden retriever, kept following me around from room to room, just looking at me like he wanted something from me. i thought maybe he wanted outside. but, that wasn't it. i had already fed him so i knew that wasn't it. then i thought maybe he wanted a drink. his water bowl was not empty but i put some fresh water in it anyway. sure enough, that is what he wanted, fresh water. now, that surprised me because i had not known him to care if his water was fresh before. i continued getting ready and i began to think about how interesting it was to me that he knew where to go to get what he wanted, the good stuff. i knew that even if his water bowl had been empty, he knew where to get a drink if he was thirsty enough. i had caught him drinking from the toilet a number of times. but today, he was coming to his provider for the provision that i could offer him, clean, fresh, cold water to drink. trying on his own to meet his own needs would get him toilet water, but looking to me, his provider, got him the best that i could offer him.

then, my thoughts returned to my sweet baby jacob and how he keeps returning to the toilet over and over and now he is drinking the dog's water. the clean, fresh water that i got dodger and angel this morning is not the best for jacob. and he definitely does not belong in the toilet. and, if he listens to me and trusts me and comes to me to take care of him, i will provide what is best for him. but, he must believe that i can give him what is better than he can get on his own. i thought to myself that today jacob and dodger are the perfect object lessons for me, showing me that if i just go about my life trying to live in my own understanding and not depending on God to provide what is best for me, i keep ending up in the toilet and drinking dog water when His provision for me is so much better.