460 The Awesome Possum
The house was packed to the gills with people for a Christmas party. Despite all the bodies, my attention was drawn to the floor. There, no taller than a pair of high-top sneakers, was the strangest sight I had ever seen. It looked like a weird possum sporting a red dog harness.
It had a long, severely bent, skinny nose. I don’t know where its left eye was, but it wasn’t in the socket. The critter limped along with short stiff steps that were obviously hindered by arthritis. It was a pitiful sight yet I was inexplicably drawn to it. It appeared to be blind in the other eye and unable to hear; yet despite all these aliments it was overflowing with a magnetic joy for life.
“Who owns this cool ... thing,” I asked aloud.
“I do,” said Gary, a kindly, life-worn fella in his 60s. “He’s a dog. His real name is Henry but everyone calls him Possum. Let me tell you how we got him.”
“I was driving down the road when this woman in front of me slammed on her brakes n I nearly rammed her. She jumped out of her car and ran around to the front. I figured somethin’ bad had happened so I got out of my car and followed her.
“I nearly hit this ... this thing,” the lady said, obviously repulsed as she held Possum. “Could you hold it while I go and get help?
“She handed him to me and I never saw her again. I took him around the neighborhood but nobody knew him or wanted him. I couldn’t just leave him so I took him home.”
“Boy was he a mess. He was bald cuz of flees and his nose was broke real bad. He was deaf, missin’ one eye and starved. Me and Carol (Gary’s wife) cleaned him up, fed him and took him to the vet. He said Possum needed a $3,000 surgery to try to save the sight in his other eye. Carol did a fundraiser and had the surgery done but it didn’t really help.”
“That’s when we decided to get ol’ Willy to be Possum’s seein’-eye dog.” Gary pointed across the room to a young healthy dachshund whom Possum must have looked like before tragedy befell him. “Carol tied them two together with a leash, but Possum was too strong and drug poor Willy all over the place n all the while running into stuff.”
I just couldn’t believe the zest for life that Possum radiated. I asked several people who knew him and without hesitation they all said Possum was the most loving, happy little dog they had ever known.
This could be a story about Gary and Carol, but for me it’s about Possum.
Though beaten, rejected and weak, this dog loves life like few dogs, or humans for that matter, that I have ever seen.
Paul once said, “…for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:10) I don’t think I would have even noticed Possum had it not been for his strength in his weaknesses.
I came to this party feeling a bit sorry for myself over the hardships of the past year. I buried four friends because of cancer. I was hamstrung all year with a torn groin muscle which I got because I was weakened from having Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Some longtime friends shunned me because they couldn’t accept both me and my beliefs being in the room at the same time.
And for the first time, my hairline receded from both the front and the back of my head.
It took a dog that looks like a weird possum wearing a red dog harness to help me see that the hardships of this year are what will help me be stronger next year.
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