He was former military and had just taken a job in Huntsville, AL. They would be moving at the end of the next week and they were getting ready for a big yard sale. His wife was a sweet, little Romanian lady with a heavy accent. She was scurrying all over the house getting ready to move. She was trying to sell us everything in the house!
At one point she asks Erik if we would want a free cat. He tells her that he has always wanted a cat but that both he and his little brother are both allergic to cats so we have never been able to have one. She explains that these are outdoor cats; they have never been inside the house and that all we would have to do is put some food out and they would be fine. They are good mousers, she says, and that catches Erik's ear. We had been having a little trouble with mice getting in from the field behind our house.
So Erik asks me what I thought. I tell him maybe but I would have to talk it over with mom. I have brought animals home without consulting my wife once before. Only once. And it will never happen again.
So I buy the lawn mower and the man is nice enough to put it on his trailer and bring it back to our house. We shake hands and say goodbye. I ask Cheryl about the cat and she says let her think about it. We already have a dog, a bird, and a guinea pig. But the idea of an outdoor cat who will catch mice is appealing. The kids are all excited. We might get a cat! Especially my animal loving daughter, Whitney. They ask us everyday, Are we going to get the cat from those people?
A few days later the phone rings. It's the little Romanian lady. "Won't you please take one of our cats? You know the Bible says in Proverbs that a righteous man cares even for the animals." Oh no she didn't! Did she just play the Bible card? Anyway, she's crying and telling us that the cats belonged to her neighbor who was a good friend and that she died and so she adopted them and it would break her heart if she couldn't find a good home for them.
Needless to say, we took the cat. We arranged to come pick him up on my lunch break one day. So Cheryl and I drive out to her house with the little kennel that we use to crate our dog. That's what we planned to use to transport the cat to hi new location. When we arrive, she introduces us to Jimmy, a pretty orange and white striped cat. He is obviously agitated. He knows something is up. He's pacing around the kitchen, wide-eyed.
Meg, the little Romanian lady, explains that Jimmy has never been in the house so he's a little freaked out. Oh, great, I thought, just wait until we try to cram him in the crate! Suddenly Jimmy walks over to the sliding glass door, leaps about eight feet in the air and claws the door all the way down! Yikes. Meg is talking sweetly to Jimmy, trying to calm him down. She walks over and picks him up and brings him to the crate. I open the door. It takes a few tries to get Jimmy and all his splaying limbs inside the crate. Once we do, Jimmy is not happy.
In fact, Jimmy goes insane! He's howling and yowling and clawing and scratching and rolling over and over. It's all I can do to hold on to the thing. Meg is crying, "It's okay, Jimmy. Mommy loves you. It's all right..." Jimmy ain't havin' it. Jimmy is in full freak mode.
Finally we get him in the car and Meg says a tearful goodbye along with some last minute instructions. She gives us some of Jimmy's favorite food, his dish. Some things to help make the transition go smoother. "I'll call in a couple of days to see how he is doing,"she says. We assure her Jimmy will be well taken care of. We'll take pictures and email them to you, we tell her.
On the ride home, Jimmy calms down. He goes still and quiet. He even lets us scratch behind his ears. He's very friendly, just scared. We talk about how we are going to bring Jimmy onto our back screened in porch to assimilate him. The plan is to feed him and pet him and talk to him to give him the idea that this is home. We talk about how much Jimmy will love it at our house. It will cat heaven! Our kids will love him, he will have the run of the place. We laugh about how our dog will probably be afraid of him. Meanwhile, Jimmy is in the crate in the back, completely calm. Was that a purr?
When we arrive with Jimmy, it's like a scene from a Disney movie. The kids all pour out of the house and run to greet Jimmy. They are so excited. We finally get to have a cat! But when we go to get Jimmy out of the car, he starts in with the freak-out again. He's howling and yowling and kicking with his back legs as hard as he can. I struggle to hold on as we slowly walk Jimmy around the back of the house to the porch, where he will be fed and loved and assured...
I am almost to the steps of the porch when suddenly Jimmy, in a last ditch, super-feline feat of strength, kicks the entire cage door completely off it's hinges. In the half a second it took me to realize what was happening, an orange and white blur shot out of the cage door, paused at the corner of the house to give us a look of contempt -- as if to say, "So long, suckers!"-- and disappeared. Forever. And we've never seen him since.
My head was spinning. What just happened? The kids were upset; our youngest was in tears. Disappointment hung like a fog over our backyard in that moment. Shock and disbelief gave way to anger. First at Jimmy -- How dare you! Do you know what I had planned for you? Do you realize how good you were going to have it? And you dare reject it? Reject ME?! But then I found myself angry with God. We had even prayed before our final decision to adopt the cat and felt like we had been given a green light. God, why would you do let that happen? We were just trying to do something nice for someone! Did we hear wrong? What was that all about?
I wish I could say that I handled it well in front of our kids. I was standing there still holding that stupid cage, the door laying in the grass at my feet. "Well, that's just great!" I spat. I dropped the cage, disgusted. "He's dead! You know that, don't you? He's dead! He'll be hit by a car, eaten by wild animals. He'll starve!" My wife is looking at me in horror trying to cover our youngest sons ears from hearing all this. It was not my finest moment. And my lunch break was over. I had just spent it all on that ungrateful cat. My family piled in the van to try to find Jimmy, while I went back to the office -- angry, dejected, humiliated -- and tried to be a pastor.
All day I felt horrible. I began to feel sad and defeated. I felt responsible for Jimmy. I kept hearing that sweet little Romanian lady's voice in my head, "I'll call in a few days to see how Jimmy is doing." For two weeks we wouldn't answer the phone for fear it was her! The phone would ring and the kids would yell, "Don't answer it! It's the cat lady!" I didn't know why it effected me so badly. I came home from work that evening. No Jimmy. Over the next few days, whenever we went outside, we would call out, "Jimmy! JIIIIIIIIIMMMMMMYYYYYYYYY!" Nothing. Jimmy was not coming back.
That evening I was out in the back yard with my oldest son, Erik. We were just kind of standing there, on the spot where it all happened. I was no longer angry, just kinda sad. While we were talking it over, it seemed like God answered my question, Why did You let this happen? It just came spilling out over my lips as we talked. "It's like when God has something great planned for us, somewhere He wants to take us that is better than anything we ever imagined," I said, "but because the transition from the place we are now to the place He wants us to be can be scary, we panic and bolt, like Jimmy. And we miss out on all the good things He has." The lights were coming on for me, even as I was speaking. "What is worse, we take ourselves out from under His provision and protection and refuse to come under it. Then we are on our own in a dangerous and hostile world."
Romans 8:28-29 sprang to the forefront of my mind:
And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son...My mind immediately went back to something Matt Chandler, pastor of the Village Church in Dallas, TX, had said at a pastors' conference I recently attended. He was speaking to a room full of church planters and pastors, and he made this statement:
"Suffering is coming for your people. It just is. You can't protect them from it but you can prepare them for it."That statement had really burned into my heart. I thought of all the families in our church and the things they were going through -- broken marriages, strained relationships with kids, lost jobs, addictions, diseases, financial struggles. The dots were beginning to connect. I remembered a prayer I had prayed a week or so earlier. I was due to preach in a month or so for our lead pastor who was going to be in Africa with a missions team. I had asked God, "What do You want to say to our people?"
The incident with Jimmy, the quote from Matt Chandler, and the passage from Romans 8 all came into line perfectly.
- God wants to take us somewhere we could never get on our own. He wants to produce in us the very image of Christ. It's what we were created for, to bear His image and so bring Him glory.
- The primary way He produces that in us is through suffering. James says that "the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." (Jas. 1:3-4, NASB)
- How we respond to suffering says everything about who we believe God is. That's why James said it was the testing of your faith. It proves whether or not you believe that God is who He says He is and that He will do what He says He will do. (see Hebrews 11:6)
- Trusting God requires a change in our perspective about what is truly "good."
To this day, we don't know what happened to Jimmy. He's a legend, like Bigfoot. Maybe he's out there somewhere. Our oldest swears he saw him the other day at the fringe of the property. But he blinked and he was gone. But whether or not he ever comes back I am deeply grateful for what he taught me, and for how God used him to encourage our people to hang on to God even when things seem scary.
Click here to here the sermon I preached from this experience.
