Can I Stop Running After The One I Love?
Can we save them from dangerous choices?
I knew it was a dangerous thought as soon as it popped into head.
“What will I write about this week? Not much has happened.”
This is always, without fail, when something happens.
Something big.
Trouble ahead
It was Sunday evening. The sun was setting, tucking in a quiet weekend. Husband down in the yard working out on his weight bench.
Pup by his side.
Until she wasn’t.
“Your dog is gone,” he called upstairs with frustration. “She’s taken off after deer.”
We’d done this dance before, in the early months when we moved to this remote marsh property.
Both those times Pup was gone for over two hours deep into unreachable areas of the wild marsh.
Unreachable, that is, until Husband went clomping through the marsh calling her.
During the sizzling, slower, humid summer days, those daytime chases were almost a distant memory.
The weather is cooling now, the deer are back.
Pup’s hound dog nose was the first to get the news.
She was gone faster than she could ever consider all the dangers that awaited her: getting impaled on a branch, snakes, and gulp, alligators.
She only knew one thing.
Must. Catch. Deer.
Are you a chaser, too?
Do you know this awful feeling, Dear Reader? Watching someone you love take-off without logic, convinced they are fulfilling their life purpose?
Plunging into a dangerous love affair?
Gambling life savings on a futile business idea?
You know they’re making a huge mistake, perhaps even endangering their lives.
What do we do? We take off after them, deciding it’s our job to save them from themselves.
Of course, risking your safety to save someone else doesn’t instantly seem like a dumb idea.
“I got her,” Husband phoned me breathless, as I looked for her from my truck. “She came to me in the middle of the marsh when I called her.”
This story was over.
Until it wasn’t.
My phone rang again.
“I’m lost,” Husband announced. “There is no moon tonight. I have no idea how to get back.”
He told me to stay on the phone, as we realized what a terrible choice we had made.
He and Pup were lost in the middle of the pitch-dark marsh surrounded by a rising tide.
Surely, every alligator and snake within 50 miles were making their way towards them.
I was convinced they were both going to die, and I was going to hear it live over the phone.
I held my breath for what seemed like an hour.
“I think I see the back of our closest neighbor’s house,” Husband finally said.
I exhaled.
As they emerged from the thick brush, wet, muddy and scratched up, I gave thanks.
And thought, “Something happened this week,”
Something with a lucky ending.
This story will continue
What about next time?
Sure, we’ll watch Pup more closely, but that hound nose is a powerful opponent.
This has me thinking.
Are we supposed to stop running after the ones we love and their questionable choices?
Could this be the most dangerous thought of all?
While you’re here…
If you like this story, you might enjoy my book,
