Bella Plays Fetch, Bailey Pays No Rent: A Funny Bones Night in This House

Divine Ones, if you came here tonight tired, heavy, or just unable to settle your mind, I did not bring you a lecture. I brought you my house at its most ridiculous, because sometimes the thing that saves a night is not a deep word. Sometimes it is a laugh you did not see coming.

Pull up a chair. Let me tell you about the two smallest landlords I know.

Bella decided she is a dog now

Bella LaShawn is a kitten. An orange tabby kitten, small, cute, and fully convinced this house runs on her schedule.

Somebody forgot to tell her that cats are supposed to be too cool for fetch. Bella plays fetch. I throw her little toy mouse, she goes and gets it, and she brings it right back to me like, again. Again, Mama. Throw it again.

And I do. Every time. Because how do you say no to that face, and because watching something that small be that determined will preach to you if you let it. She does not bring the mouse back one time and retire. She brings it back, drops it, and waits for the next throw with her whole chest.

Divine Ones, some of us need that energy back. Not the tired kind, not the frantic kind. The simple, joyful kind that says, I am still here, I am still playing, throw it again.

Bailey has never paid a bill in his life

Then there is Bailey.

Bailey is my pit bull, grown, solid, and laid out on his bed like a man who just closed on the property. Legs stretched, head down, looking at everybody like we are the guests.

That dog has never paid a bill in this house. Not the lights, not the food, not one single thing with his name on it. And still, he sleeps with the peace of somebody whose rent is handled, whose bowl stays full, and whose spot is not up for debate.

I looked at him one night and had to laugh at myself, because Bailey was resting better than I was, and I am the one who knows the Provider. That will fix your perspective real quick. The dog is not worried about tomorrow. The dog is not rehearsing every what if. The dog trusts the house he lives in, and he rests like it.

Baby, there is a word in that, whether you want it or not.

Laughter is not you avoiding the heavy

Now hear me, because I do not play about pain, and I would never tell a hurting person to just laugh it off. That is not what this is.

Proverbs 17:22 says a merry heart doeth good like a medicine. Medicine is not denial. Medicine is something you take because something in you needs tending. Laughter, the real kind that catches you off guard in your own kitchen, is one of the ways God tends a tired heart without making you explain yourself first.

You can be grieving and still laugh at a kitten bringing back a mouse. You can be waiting on God and still crack up at a dog who acts like he owns the deed. One does not cancel the other. Some nights the laugh is proof that the heavy did not take everything. Your joy is still in the house. It still answers when it is called.

What these two keep teaching me

Bella teaches me to bring it back. Whatever life throws, bring your heart back to the One who threw you into this purpose in the first place, and be ready to go again, without shame about how many rounds it takes.

Bailey teaches me to rest like it is already handled. Not lazy, not careless. Settled. The kind of rest that says the house is covered, so I can lay my big self down and breathe.

Inside the Divine Candi Academy, we talk about this side of the walk too, how to keep your joy, your humor, and your softness alive while you are doing serious spiritual growing, because a worker with no joy will dry up and call it discipline. That room lives here: https://www.divinecandi.com/challenge-page/69f405a5-af75-480d-ae49-41073445e8a1

Take the laugh with you tonight

So tonight, Divine Ones, I am not sending you to bed with a heavy assignment.

I am sending you with a picture. A kitten who thinks she is a dog, bringing her mouse back one more time. A big dog asleep like the bills are not his business. And you, in the middle of your own house, allowed to laugh, allowed to rest, allowed to believe both of those things belong to you at the same time.

Throw it again, Bella.

Bailey, scoot over, baby. Some of us are learning how to rest like that.

Stand on that, and smile while you do it.

Read next: "Lord, Hold Me While I Wait: A 3 AM Prayer for the One Still Believing" for the nights when your heart needs holding, and "Bella Runs This House: A Funny Bones Story for When You Needed a Laugh," because this little landlord has been running things for a while now.