Jug

I’d like to share a truth with you, something I do not normally talk about, something about which I tend to be sensitive. You see, I have a disability, a true out-and-out, dyed-in-the-wool disability – car plate indicator and all. If you had seen me out running errands or at church or anywhere else I tend to frequent, you wouldn’t necessarily have known about this disability unless I was having a “stormy” day. But now, well, now you couldn’t help but notice because now I have a constant companion, a 65-lbs shadow. He trails at me heel, sits when I ask (mostly), gets me things when I need, even closes the curtains and turns off the light when told, sometimes when not told if he thinks there could be a treat coming his way. This 65-lbs shadow is a little, yellow Labrador retriever named Jug.

Jug, named for a Tuskegee Airman, came to me via an amazing veterans’ organization called Veterans Moving Forward (VMF). Never heard of them? Neither had I until a friend from college told me about them. This amazing network of people provide service dogs for veterans in need, and, unlike a lot of also reputable organizations, the injuries do not have to be sustained in a combat theatre. Lucky for me, as my injuries were received while serving in Maryland 15 years ago, and while I realize that some areas of that state are a bit sketchy, Congress has yet to designate Maryland a war zone.

I have spent years avoiding the label “disabled.” I want to be “normal,” to be healthy and active and strong, but wanting isn’t the same as being. Instead of being able to run five miles five days a week, there are now days that I can’t climb the stairs in my own home. There are still days I can run, and I try to focus on those, but my five-milers are most likely behind me.

Even worse are the days that my mind simply isn’t the same. Those are the days that the pain clouds my head, and connections that previously would be as easy as opening a kitchen drawer, find that drawer slammed shut. I forget names, dates, whole conversations that I had five minutes ago. Mostly these things come back with prompting, subtle reminders, or “mental sticky notes” that I create, and I have learned to adjust. But for a woman who identifies herself largely by her mental capacity, this shift in capability is no small thing.

Jug and his beautiful brain are an amazing gift but, in all honesty, he is a gift that I had a terrible time accepting. I met with the board of VMF in October, and I shied away from what they had to say. You see, even with all my education and experience, I had never put together that my injuries and symptoms totaled a TBI (traumatic brain injury). How could my injury be the same as someone who had their Humvee blown up in Iraq? It didn’t seem possible. But it was, and it is.   And still I struggled.

VMF offered new information and hope. They offered a new perspective and a chance at help and healing or at least the concept of treatment, but I hesitated. Why? Because who was I to grasp the dangling diamond of mercy offered. My unworthiness – worthlessness, really, clung to my skin in tarnished scales, and I couldn’t bear to reach for the possibility that there was a different way of life.

The first week of December, a second veterans’ organization, Air Compassion for Veterans, paid for my mother and me to go to Virginia to train with Jug for a week. Vienna Presbyterian Church paid for our hotel and arranged for transportation for the week. The path was cleared for Jug to become my companion and helper. And in Virginia, as I trained with him, my heart was heavy with doubt. Jug knew. I knew it. VMF knew it.

I prayed for guidance (Because the clear path wasn’t enough. I think God must shake His head at me A LOT.) And sometimes it’s just that easy. Sometimes, when you ask, well, God delivers in a very big, very clear way.

Jug was raised by a retired diplomat and his wife, D and J, who live in Vienna, Virginia. I love these people! Well, D and J, are in their 70s, but met their freshmen year of high school at Washington High School in Phoenix, Arizona. D told me this, and I began to cry. Sometimes it really is that easy: I was the school nurse at Washington High School in Phoenix, Arizona, when I returned to the Sonoran Desert in 2002.

God spoke. I heard. Jug came home with me that weekend.

I am a different person than I was 15 years ago. I have a disability that I am both learning to live with and talk about. God provided Jug as a tool to do both. Amen.