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    Seasons With Mitch: Lessons learned along the way
    Seasons With Mitch: Lessons learned along the way
    Seasons With Mitch: Lessons learned along the way
    Ebook143 pages2 hours

    Seasons With Mitch: Lessons learned along the way

    By Catherine Lockman Zabel

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    About this ebook

    This book is an inspiring collection of devotionals gleaned from nature walks with the author's dog. Through conversations and experiencing truths played out through daily walks with Mitch, the author writes about adventures and misadventures during the four seasons. As nature becomes a backdrop and a blackboard for lessons learned along the way, the changing of the seasons marks the passing of time in dog and master's lives. Whether it is the night of the feared dognapping of her best four-footed friend, or an encounter on the highway with a state trooper in her speed demon red car, God inevitably shows up with a reminder from scripture, or His own special kind of intervention. Sometimes the reader is treated to conversations between master and canine which point to greater truths from a greater Master. Come along and enjoy a walk from your favorite armchair or reading spot. You can read as little or as much as you like without spoiling a single adventure. Miracles, angels, and divine intervention, the author encounters them all as just another blessed day in the journey of a believer.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThomas Nelson
    Release dateSep 24, 2019
    ISBN9781400324927
    Seasons With Mitch: Lessons learned along the way
    Author

    Catherine Lockman Zabel

    Catherine Lockman Zabel has been a psychotherapist for twenty-seven years, with the last seven years spent in emergency psychiatric crisis consultation at the local hospital.  She has shared most of her life with a dog, but this most special dog, Mitch, acted as muse and friend to inspire her to write about God encounters in everyday life.

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      Book preview

      Seasons With Mitch - Catherine Lockman Zabel

      WINTER

      Icould feel the intensity of his gaze before I saw it, burning into the nether regions of my brain. I was rising from consciousness, feeling my way toward daylight, and I cracked my eyelids and was met with two dark orbs fiercely penetrating mine, willing me to open my eyes. Mitch was standing at the bedside, resting his chin on the mattress mere inches from the range of my breath. I knew what he wanted, and I gave it. Okay, come on up. You see, Mitch is a gentleman and never invades the confines of my bed without being invited. I gave him his belly rub and he gave me sweet doggy kisses on my chin, our morning ritual, and quite the satisfying way to start the day. Do you have anyone who wills you awake and greets you with such love? I sure hope so. We are promised that if we seek, we will find. Jesus is quite the gentleman, too, and waits at the door of our hearts to be invited in. If you are seeking, I hope you find Him this Christmas season. He will fill the vacuum inside that was made to be filled by Him only.

      Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.

      Revelation 3:20

      So many challenges are issued these days—to get healthier, to be wealthier, to be skinnier, to be more attractive. Just buy this product, drink this elixir, walk on this mechanical contraption, or take this educational course. And some folks accept the challenges wholeheartedly, at least for a while. Will no one challenge us to build our spiritual muscle to feed our faith? It costs so much less, but does so much more—for our souls. Drink in God’s word and practice His precepts, for in doing so you are fortifying your soul with divine sustenance. Are you tending to Jesus? Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. My community gets involved in The Thousand Ten Project each year where teams of ten people, each with ten dollars in their pockets go out and fill needs and help our neighbors. I pray that once a year becomes a daily habit for these participants. What if we showed such care every day of our lives? Flex your spiritual muscle of compassion today and do an act of kindness for someone. I challenge you.

      Mitch has the most beautiful, expressive eyes of any dog I have loved. When he sits down in front of me and fixes those dark liquid pools of love on me, we literally carry on whole conversations—me with my words and Mitch using only his gaze and facial expressions. I wish you could hear what I hear. This morning I was having my cereal in my recliner, as I hardly ever eat at the table in my home, and Mitch had taken his station, sitting patiently right in front of me with hope and faith in his eyes that I would share with him before I was done, as every dog knows that any human food is better than the best dry dog food ever manufactured. Mitch was saying very poignantly to me, Master, if you have any love in your soul, you will let me drink the milk out of your bowl when you are finished. I had already thought this through; I had used almond milk this morning. Since I have read that almonds are on the list of foods not to give your dog, I figured that almond milk would be harmful and mentally told myself not to give in and let him lap the milk out of my bowl.

      Mitch, it is just the opposite of what you think. Because I have love in my soul for you, I will not give you what your eyes are begging for—it will harm you.

      He looked at me with disappointment as I stood and took the bowl to the sink to dump the leftover milk. I thought of all the conversations I have had with my Master, as I begged and prayed for things I did not receive, and the kindness of the LORD became evident in those refusals. Because of the love in His soul for mine, God said no and dumped the residue of my misguided prayers down the drain of heaven, and I am reassured of my Father’s love for me. God is never wrong. Thank you, God, for always looking out for me.

      Sorry for all you snow haters, but I awoke to the most beautiful world this morning. I even took a picture of a tree in my backyard, bedecked with snow in the loveliest of ways, and tried to send it to Facebook. But then I could not find it there, even though the phone said that it was sent. I am saddened that so lovely a scene seems lost in the Ethernet, the quagmire that is social media and encyclopedia extraordinaire. The pristine whiteness of the world shouts of God. God is pure light, the essence of all things good—as white is the presence of all visible colors of the light spectrum and speaks to the complete and perfect nature of God, His purity and righteousness. Black is the absence of light and why it stands for sin and evil, because there is no presence of God in the darkness, no light at all. So I joyfully sing, Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! because when I gaze on God’s creation covered with snow, it cries out to me, Here is God, and here is God, and over there is God. We Christians are all perfectly covered in the purity and righteousness of God, just as the snow blankets the landscape. Thank you, snow, for the reminder.

      As adults, why do we get tears in our eyes when we sing Away in a Manger? Oh, you don’t, you tell me. All right. Then I am glad I am strange. Any strange people out there with me? Just maybe because your six-year-old little self is standing on an elementary school platform, dressed in a velvet dress and patent leather shoes, her serious brown eyes diligently scanning the school gymnasium trying to pick out the familiar faces of mommy and daddy. When she spots her daddy waving his camera at her, the excitement causes her breath to catch in her throat. Maybe your seven-year-old self is standing in front of a church Nativity scene, holding your little brother’s hand as you lean over and seriously shush him as you warn him not to wake the baby Jesus. Perhaps you remember visiting your grandparents at Christmastime and your mother tells you to sing for Grandma the song you sang in the Christmas Eve service at church, as she seats your grandparents on the sofa and stands you in front of them and starts you off with a little help—away in a manger… Or perhaps your mind travels to loved ones you sorely miss, who have left your side, and now, holidays never fail to have a melancholy cast, a longing for what will never be again. Do you weep for innocence lost and love that has been swept up and put away, waiting for eternity and the reunion of lost loves of your life? Maybe your adult mind is overwhelmed with the thought of a young mother’s firstborn, lying in a hay-fragrant stable as she gazes on Him, scarcely able to contain the hope and wonder in her heart, and you recall gazing on your firstborn with the same wonder and awe. At that moment, your heart overflows with future hopes and dreams. The love lost, the love found, the love hoped for are all present in Christmas. If you see me this Christmas and I happen to have love and hope leaking from my eyes, rejoice with me as we ponder our redemption come nigh.

      Listening to my Christmas CDs today, I should have known better. I paused between steps of a recipe to sit down and have a cry; after all, you can’t read the print of a recipe through watery glimmers of tears. I was listening to Andy Williams sing It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. If I could rename it, I would say it is the most bittersweet time of the year. I am glad young people don’t know that yet, and their Christmases aren’t perfused with a prescient melancholy. No matter what joy and celebration are heralded at this time of year, with attendant blessings galore, there is still a presence of knowing and missing and grieving for what was and is no more. Praise the Lord, He gives and takes away! That is life. Listening to Sleigh Ride, I recall a particular ride to my parents’ house on Christmas Eve when this Leroy Anderson tune came on the radio, and Tom opened all the car windows and drove about 15 mph while I jingled the bells on a Christmas package—about the closest I’ve ever come to an actual sleigh ride. It invades my thinking that Tom has two grandsons who are his namesakes—seven-year-old Ayden Thomas, and brand new little Jack Thomas—and he never got to meet either one. Tonight I will go to church, then to see new baby Jack, so the blue memories of Elvis’s Blue Christmas will be covered over by hope and the meaning of the season—the living reminder that life goes on, and that Jesus is my hope and the hope of the world. Merry Christmas to those I love, near and far. Life is still worthwhile.

      ’Tis not unpleasant to be tearful at being surprised by beauty. While getting ready for festivities tonight with my children and their children, I had the radio on listening to Christmas music, when I was suddenly overwhelmed by the opening refrain of the Hallelujah chorus. This man, Handel, must have written this masterpiece as a pure act of worship, and that is conveyed to me as I automatically rise to my feet at the sound of the familiar strains. It is as if my body has a worship center of its own, which reacts of its own accord to the majestic, holy strains. If the music in heaven is any better

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