There were blankets, quilts, and a comforter on the floor. My little doxie tilted her head in puzzlement. I had seriously interrupted her world of play so early in the morning. I was making my bed and as a direct result of fitful sleep my sheets needed tending to. The fitted sheet had popped off the corners and the flat was nowhere to be found. My husband stood opposite of me on his side of the bed, staring. I could hear what he was thinking. 

“How exactly do you manage to do this? How are you capable of tearing sheets completely off the bed in the midst of sleep?” 

He doesn’t actually say it anymore, twenty years of being bedmates and he doesn’t have to. He is a solid as a rock sleeper. He stays in one position, on his side of the bed, his bedding is nearly just as it was the night before when he entered  the bed as when he awakens. 

I had removed everything and thrown it into a tall pile on the floor while I sorted out my post slumber sheet confusion. 

The most playful doxie has earned many nicknames since becoming a Martin. She is “Happy Baby”, “Crazy Baby”, “Crazy Eyes”, “Mae-Mae”, “Happy Eater”, “Stinky-Baby”, “Silly-Baby”, “Kissy-Baby.” She responds to most any name and is most enthusiastic when she does so. She is a dapple doxie with unique coloring. She looks like a myriad of chocolate foods. She resembles cheesecake brownies, Baskin Robbins Chocolate Peanut butter ice cream, a Toasted Marshmallow, and a chocolate ribbon I make for the family, “That good cake you make” is actually what they call it. 

So as she tilted her head toward the towering obstacle in her path blocking her exit, I giggled. “What’s the matter Mae? Did Mama mess up your plan and block your path?” The tower of blankets where ten times her height, the passageway between my bed and the furniture hugging the wall completely occluded. There was no way over, no way around, no way under the pile. Macy was stuck and there was no way out, no way to the other side. She whined as she surveyed her circumstances. That got my husband’s attention. He leaned over and saw her predicament. I made some comment about having to work quickly to clear her path because she had no way out. About that time he said, “What’d you say?” as I caught a flash of her brownie-colored body heading out of the bedroom door. 

Where I saw no way out,  overwhelming obstacles, Macy had not been deterred. She realized what I had not. She had been made for just such an obstacle as this. Where there was no way out, her long and low body flattened out and she crawled beneath my bed to freedom on the other side. She had been given just what she needed to make it through a most daunting situation. She couldn’t have walked under my bed. It is too low for that, even as vertically challenged as she is she would have not had clearance for her head. Immediately the King’s Word came to mind. 

 

Isaiah 43: 19

Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

1 Corinthians 10:13

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

That puzzled pup reminded me that the Lord makes a way when there doesn’t even seem to be a way and that He can be trusted to do that even when my eyes can not see how that is even possible. 

I do not have to try and figure out the way out of so many impossible situations if I trust and have faith in Him to make the way.

In fact, I would even go so far as to say, if I can figure it out, that isn’t faith at all. 

Macy’s ancestral dachshunds were made to hunt badgers, they are low to the ground, to track scents, and long so they could hunt into badger burrows. She was equipped to make that escape long before I had presented the obstacle before her. She rarely uses that equipping, she is more of a snuggly baby than a ferocious badger hunting baby.  She did remind me though I am like her in that I have been given the Holy Spirit through my faith in Jesus to equip me in those moments of obstacle presented to me and that He has promised He will make a way. He is the way. 

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

              -Jesus Christ