Chin Up

Every morning and every evening, I get Fiona, my fluffy faced Ninja chinchilla, out of her cage and let her hop around a properly chin-proofed room, like the bathroom, so she can get some exercise since her exercise wheel doesn’t fit in her current habitat.

I enjoy these times so much for many reasons. One of them is that by observing her, I learn lessons. She’s like a whisper from God, and during these times I have little to do but listen.

Lately, the message has been clear and constant – look up.

See, Fi likes to climb. Any horizontal surface that is higher than wherever she is sitting, she will try to get there. She’s always looking up. And to me, it seems like she’s calculating her chances of making it to whatever flat ledge she’s eyeing.

As amazing as she is, able to vertical jump from floor to average-height sink vanity in one leap, sometimes the ledge she desires is too high and she doesn’t make it on the first jump.

Seeing her wipe out makes my heart skip a beat, but every time she just gets up, shakes it off, and eyes the very same ledge recalculating for the next try.

This amazes me about her. She is determined. I do my best to deter her if I think it is unsafe for her to try again, but that doesn’t always work. If she’s decided she can do it, she finds a way.

Whether we’ve missed the ledge in life we were shooting for or we find out the ledge wasn’t a ledge at all but just an illusion, we’ve all had some tough wipeouts. When (seemingly) every attempt results in a failure, circumstances bog us down and we get used to staring into the mire that sucks us further into its sticky, dirty, dark, depressing depths.

Watching Fi try and try again, continuing her journey up as high as she can get, inspires me to do the same. Look up. Get up. Reach up. Keep going up.

He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and the mire. He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along. Psalm 40:2

Blessings, Dry Ground friends!