Kathy & the New Cat

June 27, 2024

Hope from Hood

Pastor Joanie

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. you are my friends if you do what I command you.”
John 15:12-14

This past Sunday, Jason shared about seeing God as a friend. He also talked about our responsibility to each other and to be friends as a way to be closer to Christ. Check out Sunday’s service & Pastor Jason’s challenge to us:

We have enjoyed hearing from Al & Kathy Lopez and their summer of adventures and rest (hopefully) in Colorado. Here are the recent reflections from Rev. Dr. Kathy Lopez:

Al and I have a new addition to our family – a cat named Lemmy! After two encounters with
unwanted furry visitors, the neighbors told us that the only reliable rodent protection measure
was a cat. By the way, my dogs are useless. I came back into the cabin one afternoon to find a
squirrel had taken up residence on my couch while both dogs were sound asleep less than
three feet away!

We wandered down the mountain last Tuesday to visit the closest animal shelter in search of a mouser. We bypassed the kittens in search of an adult cat. After checking them all out, Al pointed to the scruffiest cat in the building and made his decision! We went to the front desk, where we requested that they bring out Lemmy to visit with us in one of the rooms set aside for
that purpose. The girl at the desk said that it would perhaps be better to take us back into the staff area to visit Lemmy in his cage. We were taken through the staff door only to see a big red tag on Lemmy’s cage as a warning to the volunteers. Scruffy and hostile! This was only getting better and better.

When I sat down next to the open cage, Lemmy was very open to having his head scratched
and be loved on as long as we didn’t try to pick him up. He had been a stray, so who knows
what happened to him, but he was friendly as long as it was on his terms. I could live with that.
We brought him home and set up one of the rooms in the cabin as a dedicated Lemmy space
where he could become acclimated in a safe dog-free space.

For the first day or so, Lemmy stayed under the bed, but he was eating and using the litter box,
so I was content to wait him out. I would lie on the floor next to the bed and talk to him and
otherwise just hang out in the room with him. After a day or so, he wandered down into our
bedroom and even came out from under the bed to let me rub his head for a minute before
running back into hiding. His body language indicated that he was increasingly feeling safe in
my presence, even going so far as to sit at the entrance of the room and meow at me as I
walked by. But still, he is unwilling to trust me enough to come out from hiding except for very
short moments of contact before skittering off again.

Stretched out on the floor, twirling a cat toy in Lemmy’s direction, a thought came to me. There
is no way I would hurt this cat. He has nothing to fear from me, and I think he knows that at
some level, but he can’t trust it. And I thought, is that what God feels like with us? Pardon the
metaphor, but does God do the equivalent of lying on the floor next to us, attempting to coax us
out from under whatever “bed” we’ve hidden ourselves under? Knowing that we can trust God,
but still unwilling to lean fully into that knowledge? Then I thought, what awaits me, all of us, if
we were able to trust God fully?

In the meantime, I’m hoping that Lemmy will become an integral and loving part of our
household, but I can’t force him out from under the bed without damaging his trust. I have to
wait on his time. As for me, I wonder what part of God’s love I am missing because I can only
trust so much before I run and hide? What would full trust in God look like in my life? I don’t
know yet, but when I do, God will be waiting.