Growing with Gailey

* the pace of the Spirit*

On a whim one day, as I was about to depart for a hike in the woods, I grabbed my little dog Gailey’s leash. Knowing that “a tired dog is a good dog,” I was hoping to give him an outlet for at least a fraction of his infinite energy and endless creativity. I didn’t realize that Gailey would be delighted with this outing, or that he would soon become a permanent partner in my hikes. And I certainly didn’t expect the gift his presence brings on the trail—a new perspective.

Too often, I apply mathematics to my hikes. Even if I can refrain from approaching the trail with the robotic determination of a gym session, I’m woefully pathetic at allowing my soul to settle into the moment. Yet Gailey combats this tendency. In his own delightfully and maddeningly unhurried way, he meanders along the trail, or leaves it altogether for a momentary investigation. He slows me down and holds me back and trips me up. But at the same time, he sets me free.

What started as an exercise for him became a workout for my sense of gratitude. If I allow myself to release the distractions and watch the world through Gailey’s eyes, I see wonders. My soul expands and my worries shrink. I slow down and look up and breathe in and reach out. And Gailey becomes my tour guide in the blissfully simple yet delightful world in which he lives.

Aren’t we all in need of Gailey’s perspective? Too often in our lives, the gentle sweep of joy has been crushed by the tyranny of urgency. If there are miracles along our path, we’re usually too tired to notice them and too harried to seek them. Like my former hikes, our life is quantified—tasks completed, bills paid, money earned, promotions received, days survived. How do we find another path? The secret isn’t necessarily to do less, but to do different.

What if the way I hiked with Gailey—not as a race or test of skill, but as a journey of discovery—was the way we lived our lives? What if we could learn the freer pace of the Spirit?

You see, the Spirit is not in a hurry. And at first, learning to move in His rhythm is frustrating and feels counterproductive. We’re not getting there fast enough! We’re not doing enough, saying enough, being enough!

But as we move with Him, we begin to notice blessings along our trail that we might otherwise have blown right by. They are sometimes small gifts of grace—a smile from a friend, a lovely sunset as we drive home, a bird that landed right outside our office window. Perhaps we begin to pause before we make an important decision, or backtrack to hold a door for someone carrying a heavy load, or even breathe brief prayers throughout the day.

Because when your eyes are open, miracles are everywhere. From Gailey’s point of view, each time he discovers a path of a soft moss or a tree with scaly bark, each time he splashes in a shallow stream or roots in a hole in the bank, he has found another one. And if I stay in step with him, then I smile the whole time I hike, because through his eyes, I’m finding them too.

But we will only find miracles when our eyes are open, our ears are tuned, our hearts are waiting. Perhaps that’s why it’s so important to move at the pace of the Holy Spirit—not rushing ahead, not staring at the ground as we check off another mile and another and another. His cadence is slower, His rhythm sustained, His timetable radically rearranged. But it is His schedule, orchestrated in the light of eternity, that we must keep if we are to glory in the gifts He has laid in our path.