The Wednesday Miracle

On What My Dog’s Sudden Compliance Taught Me About Patience, Patterns, and the Pace of Change

Mar 26, 2026

Good morning friends, Today, I share a random journal Entry.

As I write these notes, the morning dew blankets the driveway this morning while the birds sing out loud, perched in the mango tree in mom’s front yard. Prayers have been spoken. Mom was wide awake by the time I poked my head into her bedroom.

“Mom, good morning. Anything hurting? Did you sleep well? Everything that was working yesterday is working today?”

“No, yes and yes,” she replies.

“Grace a dieu,” I retorted.

This has become the morning script. It snaps her out of whatever despair she may be feeling and retrains the mind on the things to be grateful for. We began this a few weeks ago. It works for her, and it forces me to do the same for myself. Yes, because some mornings I need the reminder too.

Today’s mind ramblings are not particularly theological. But maybe something for you dog humans out there. I am going to bore you about Wiggles’ diet.

She has been on a raw diet her whole life. A mixture of bone, muscle meat, organ meat, and three percent fiber. She has an order of preference. When you watch her eat, from her favorite to her least favorite, you would think she had fingers. No matter how much you mix the bowl up, she manages to separate each component with meticulous precision.

She grabs the bone meat first. Then the muscle meat. Then the organ meat. As for the fiber, well, she flat out hates it. She has never liked her vegetables. She gets the fiber on Tuesdays or Wednesdays.

For her whole life, this is what it looked like. She gets the full dish on Tuesday. She eats everything except the veggies. Meal time the next day, Wednesday, I put out the dish with nothing but the fiber she left the previous day. She sniffs it. Walks over to me and gives me that look, “What’s your problem, dude? Where’s the meat?” She walks away, and I put the veggies back in the fridge. Meal time Thursday comes around. I put out the dish with nothing but the fiber she left the previous days. By this time, she has not eaten in a few days, so she reluctantly eats her portion of fiber for the week.

So, this has been the routine for about five years. There are things I used to do occasionally to hack her wiring. I would puree the veggies with ground beef and some bone broth. But considering our current situation and time constraints, daddy no longer has time for these types of theatrics. So, for the last two years, she basically fasts for two days before she will eat her fiber for the week.

Well, that is how it has always been. Until this week.

This week, I put her dish down with her portion of fiber. I sat and watched her eat. As expected, the bone meat went first. Followed by the muscle meat, the organ meat. It was at this point I was expecting her to walk away. But she did not. She went straight over to the fiber and gobbled it all down without hesitation.

After five years, what has changed, I wondered.

She finished her whole meal, walked over to me, nudged my knee with her head, and walked off into her cozy space at the head of the driveway.

Was this a one time display of gratitude and consideration for my time? Or has she simply just given up trying to outmaneuver me.

As a puppy, she learned to feign eating the veggies. She would sneak off to a corner in the back yard, regurgitate it, come back running to me, at which point I would give the meat portion of her meal. I figured out what she was doing after a while when cleaning the yard and saw a pile of regurgitated veggies. So, since that revelation, I have made it a point to watch her eat her veggies and not sneak off somewhere to spit it back out.

But yeah, so that is my head scratcher this morning. Wiggles ate the full measure of her meal on the fiber day, which was yesterday. And after five years, I do not know why she did so, without the usual theatrics I have come to expect every week.

I find myself simply watching. Waiting. I look forward to seeing what happens next week. Will this new pattern of behavior take root? Or was it a fluke, a momentary lapse in her lifelong campaign of vegetable resistance?

This small, strange shift in my dog’s behavior has me thinking about patterns, and our relationship to them. We are creatures of habit. We build our lives, our faith, our understanding of God on the predictability of certain things. The sun rises. The script with my mother works. Wiggles leaves her veggies. These patterns create a sense of order, a framework we can lean on. We come to expect certain behaviors, from our pets, from our families, from ourselves, even from God.

Then, without warning, the pattern breaks.

The temptation is to immediately search for the why. To diagnose, to explain, to fit the anomaly back into a box of understanding. Did I change the brand? No. Did the fiber taste different? Not that I can tell. Is she feeling unwell? She seems perfectly normal, vibrant even. The why eludes me.

And in that space of not knowing, I am left with a simple choice. Do I fret over the cause, or do I just observe the change? Do I accept that, for now, the reason is hidden from me?

This feels like a tiny, furry parable for my own walk. How often do I pray for a change in a stubborn pattern in my own life, in my mother’s condition, in the world’s madness? And when a shift, however small, finally occurs, do I receive it with simple gratitude? Or do I immediately begin dissecting it, questioning its legitimacy, doubting its permanence, demanding to know the why before I dare to celebrate the what?

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven,” writes the Preacher in Ecclesiastes (Ecclesiastes 3:1 ESV). There is a time for the old pattern, and a time for it to end. A time for the fasting from the veggies, and a time to eat them without complaint. Our mistake is believing we are the timekeepers. We think we understand the seasons of our own hearts, let alone the seasons of another creature, let alone the seasons of God’s movement.

Wiggles does not owe me an explanation. Her change, whether permanent or temporary, is a gift. It is one less point of friction in a day already full of them. It is a small, silent mercy. My job is not to interrogate it. My job is to notice it, to be thankful for it, and to keep providing the meal.

How much more is this true with God? He shifts a circumstance. He softens a heart. He provides an unexpected peace in a long standing turmoil. And my first instinct is rarely quiet thanks. It is often a suspicious, “Why now? How? What’s the catch? Will this last?” I am like the servant who receives a talent and immediately buries it out of fear, instead of putting it to work with joy.

“Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (James 1:19 ESV). Perhaps we should also be slow to analyze. Quick to observe, yes. Quick to give thanks, absolutely. But slow to demand the full schematic of every change. Some mysteries are not for us to solve. They are for us to witness, and in the witnessing, to learn trust.

Maybe Wiggles’ change is her own small act of surrender. A giving up of a futile fight. Maybe she finally understands the pattern leads to hunger, and acceptance leads to peace. Maybe she is just growing up. I do not know.

But her silent compliance, her simple completion of the meal, feels like a sermon. It speaks of a grace that operates without my understanding. A change that happens in the hidden places of will and habit, unseen by me until the result appears in the bowl. It reminds me that most of God’s work in me happens just like this. Unseen. Quiet. A gradual rewiring of desire. A slow turning of the will. And one day, I find myself doing the thing I swore I never would, loving the person I thought I could not, bearing the burden I was sure would break me. And I look back and cannot pinpoint the moment it changed. I only know the pattern is different.

So I will watch next week. I will place the bowl. I will observe. If she eats the fiber again, I will take it as a small, ongoing grace. If she returns to her old ways, I will continue the routine, the patient, stubborn offering of what is good for her, whether she recognizes it or not. My love for her is not contingent on her eating her vegetables. My care for her is not validated by her compliance. I provide the good thing because I am her provider. Her response is her own.

Is that not a picture of the Father’s love for us? He provides the daily bread, the sustenance we need. Our response, grateful acceptance, petulant refusal, slow resignation, is our own. His faithfulness is the constant. Our understanding is the variable.

For now, I am just a man, standing in a driveway, grateful for a clean bowl and a mystery. The birds are still singing. The dew is burning off. My mother is content. And the dog, for this week at least, has eaten all her vegetables.

That is all, and thank you for reading.

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