Cars come, cars go. The constant flow slows and finally stops as the day turns into night, the night into the still morning. The silence that finally descends in those wee hours is only broken by an occasional truck heading to the docks, the loud clanging of containers being loaded onto a cargo ship, a sing-yelling drunk, or Jett huffing. The fruit bats darkening the tree across the street make their collective presence known in spurts, but by now their incessant screeching has become a given to my conscience. It doesn’t invade my thoughts unless I’m trying to listen to music or talk to Brian when he’s not directly in front of me. The sounds of the world outside our door have become the soundtrack of my life. Cars overfull honking hellos as they go on their way, buses with traditionally dressed men and women singing a dirge for the important personage recently deceased, cries of exultation from the soccer field, preaching from the same field, the bats. Always the bats. Gunshots, fireworks, crashing thunder, and yelling. Everyone yells here, I still can’t tell on instinct whether the speaker is angry, excited, or just saying hello.

We all have our lives surrounded by the noises we know. The noises we love and the ones we hate. Those we tolerate and those we have completely forgotten. And as it goes for everyone, things happen to cause skips in that soundtrack. Oftentimes the sound interrupting our comfortable familiarity is unwelcome. It’s why we notice it. Something is amiss and our ears are a first indicator. The sound then glues itself to our memory, only letting go as time beats against it, eroding its sharpness into a barely there memory.

My soundtrack was unhappily interrupted two weeks ago and it still hasn’t left me. For many, many people it would have been a minor incident, one that occurs thousands of times every day all over the world and deserves no second thought. Alas, God created me soft in this particular area. But as those cars come and go, as the bats continue their endless song, my memory will eventually fade and I won’t hear it anymore. For now, I do still hear it and I hate it. And then I hate how sensitive I am. And then I hate our broken world where bad things are ever present. And then slowly… ever so slowly… I make my way to the One who hates the brokenness of our world more than I ever could and I reconcile.

Our neighbors’ yard from our door.

Our neighbors own many dogs. We think they breed them since the cry of puppies is an almost continual nighttime occurrence. We rarely ever see the puppies, but they’re always heard. The family has one dog that has been there since we returned in early 2014. Perhaps it was there the last time we lived on this property in 2012, but I didn’t pay attention. Every once in a while they choose a puppy to keep along with that dog, but none seem to stick. When we came back from Australia they had chosen a small, tan puppy that Ray and I watched grow. His cry at night was piercing, but it was fun to watch him frolic with the kids during the day. Now he had grown and was not nearly so cute. He had the standard look of an owned village dog, scrawny and halfway cared for. I felt no particular attachment to the creature until Jett came along. Jett’s a social animal and became quite friendly with this dog through the chain link fence separating our properties. The two of them would run back and forth, barking at each other with important things to convey. Their budding friendship was fun to watch.

Rather than giving Brian the truck that morning, I dropped him off at the office so I could take his parents and the girls to the pool later. As we left the property Jett gave us a brief glance and returned his attention to our neighbor dog to finish discussing whatever it is dogs discuss. It wasn’t long before I was pulling back in the drive and plodding up the steps to check on Ray’s progress with breakfast. That’s when we heard it. Screeching tires. Thud. Yelp. Confusion. Jett’s high pitched barking from the porch. Just in front of our gate the dog was stretched across the road, blood pooling under his head. The neighbors came out and with zero emotion waited for traffic to finish diverting around the body so they could retrieve it. Just that fast the dog was alive and dead. Just that fast. That particular collection of noises won’t leave me and I can’t “hear” them without feeling a pang. The pang isn’t just for that dog, though I’ve always been highly sensitive to any sort of violence involving animals. The pang is more about the overwhelming recognition of life’s fragility, and how fast it can change. I look at Ray and Willa, and it scares me. I think about my family, Brian’s family. I think about how just that fast something could happen. As I work through the frustration of the why, particularly why God allowed that dog to be born in the first place if this was to happen before he even turned one, I eventually have to face what I’m really reacting to: fear of losing someone just that fast.

I’m not sure how people without Christ cope when they’re facing the glare of mortality. The only certainty that I feel when the immediate fear of death for either myself or loved ones grips my heart (rationally or not) is that anything could be taken from me at any second. Each day is full of narrow misses, whether we see them or not, and I am sure that each day is a scary “maybe today.” Then I find my solid ground, Christ. I still recognize the certainty that each day is a “maybe today,” but this time by remembering that He is in control, the fear goes.

I still hate remembering that morning, and I’m sad for that dog. I hate that the world is broken, that animals are caught in our brokenness, that humans do unspeakable evil to one another. It’s all so horrible. There are some things I simply can’t think about they break my heart so wholly. But I have a hope, a peace, a joy that surpasses all understanding and I look forward to the day He fully heals what we so completely ruined. The day we get to see what it was supposed to be.