WACKY WEDNESDAY WISDOM: Surprise, Surprise, Surprise

     My famous dog Flash is a girl. She is surrounded by a neighborhood full of boy suitors. They roam in and out of our yard in search of romance. Flash is not interested. She prefers to keep her distance. We have trained her well. "Watch out," we tell her, "They're up to no good". We have witnessed some of the neighbor dogs prowling and circling our yard in search of love and we don't trust them. And we certainly don't approve of Flash hanging around them. Oh, and by the way, Flash is fixed. For those who don't know what that is, it means she will not be giving birth anytime soon, or ever. And apparently, she doesn't have any interest in the whole deal after getting fixed. Which is a good thing in our opinion.
     Not that I'm against love, romance, and puppies. But just not for Flash. She's fine being single and unavailable. Plus, I don't think we could handle the moment we suddenly discovered we were destined to be doggy grandparents. Which makes me wonder: Do expectant dog mommies have morning sickness, crave sardines and ice cream, or break into tears for no reason while watching Animal Planet reruns?
     I guess the toughest part for us, her owners, would be the part where we were surprised to discover that she was carrying around developing offspring within her body. I was going to use the term "knocked up" but I find it to be inappropriately suggestive and insensitive to all parties involved.
Which reminds me of something I heard in a salon where I was getting my hair cut a while back.
     Okay, first of all, I usually get my hair cut in a barber shop. But on this particular day, I risked the removal of my "man card" by venturing into a place where females clip and style hair, normally the hair of other females.
     I was the only male in the place at the time. But did this inhibit the conversation among the female cutters and cuttees? Absolutely not. My cutter made some small talk for a minute or two but it didn't take long for us to catch wind of the conversation going on next to us. So we did what any other normal human beings would do . . . we eavesdropped.
    The lady telling the story didn't mind. She was aware everyone there was listening as she casually explained how her daughter had recently delivered a baby . . . without knowing she was pregnant. As Gomer Pyle used to say- "Surprise, surprise, surprise."
     Said Grandma: "I kept asking her at the hospital how she could have been pregnant all those months and not know it. She said she thought all the pains and kicks were just a bad case of gas." This was nearly too much for me at that point. With as much restraint as the USA and the Soviet Union had to muster when both were staring at the Nuclear Missile Launch buttons, I managed to suppress a laughter explosion. Which made my stomach hurt as much as if I had gas myself. Which was painful, but at least I wasn't pregnant.
     Grandma finished her story and casually moved on to the next topic of discussion but I couldn't stop thinking about the unexpected birth. It seemed to me I had heard a similar story on the evening news in the past- the whole deal where the lady gives birth without knowing she was pregnant. How in the world could that be? Well, indeed it be.
     At this writing, it is not Christmas time, but I can't help but think about Jesus' mother Mary. When she tried to explain that she was unexpectedly pregnant but hadn't engaged in an essential aspect of the process, people were likely asking how that could be. Her fiance wondered the same thing until an angel assured him that all was going according to God's plan. Luke 1:37 provides one of the strongest statements in history when the angel tells Mary- "Nothing is impossible with God."
     God's love defies all logic, God's power transcends all science, and God's grace challenges all measure of human understanding. In short, we can't comprehend just how powerful and almighty God is. He's simply too big for us to place neatly in a box.
     I have to remind myself quite often that nothing is impossible with God. He can soften hardened hearts, He can reunite a divided nation, and He can use a newborn to change the world. Nothing is impossible for God, though I'm hoping a fixed Flash doesn't give birth to any miracle newborns in the Stroupe house anytime soon.