“Here comes your shadow!” Jason will often exclaim as I’m walking through the house.
He means that our dog, Samson, is following close behind me.
You can usually find Sam in my shadow…well, all the time. I often just explain Sam to other people this way: “I’m his person.”
It’s difficult to figure how this exactly happened. I mean, I’m the one who is usually putting the food and water in his dish and scratching him behind the ears…but it’s Jason who feeds him his favorite “illegal” foods and Jonas who is most likely to roll around on the floor with him.
It’s me, however. I’m the one Sam trails as I move from room to room when I’m home. I feel guilty sometimes for being so active. He’ll have just settled down on the floor at my feet and I’ll finish my task and head to another room. In the morning, no matter how early I get up, he gets up with me and follows me to the coffee pot. When I shower, he lays right outside the bathroom door, guarding it. Each night, he waits for me to go to bed and then follows me into the bedroom, waiting for me to finish getting ready. Then he follows me to my side of the bed as I settle in, accepts a pat on the head as a good night and then lays down.
(Fun fact: He lays there for about fifteen minutes. Then he heads to the living room to sleep on the couch all night. In the morning, before I wake up, he’ll come back to the bedroom and lay by the bed until I wake up. Isn’t that interesting?)
Sometimes having him as a shadow is a bit dangerous. There are many times that I’ve nearly fallen on my face when I turn around too quickly to switch directions and trip on him.
I suppose there is a spiritual application about following Jesus in all of this. I’ll leave it to you to find.
And I’ll share this blessing, brought to us by a Jewish sage:
“May you be covered in your Rabbi’s dust.”
