Granny: So, did you say, Go ahead and eat your dream?
Annie: She laughed, and corrected me; No! It wasn’t a dream and I can’t eat it! I actually wrote the story.
Granny: Oh, you wrote a story?
Annie: Yeah. Granny: Cool! Can you tell me?
Annie: Yeah, okay, so its title is The Puppy Who got Peace.
Granny: Peace? A puppy got peace?
Annie: Yeah
Granny: Okay
With a big breath, my granddaughter verbally exploded as she embarked on her story, sweeping me down the current that cascaded out of her mouth …
Annie: So, there is a puppy, who was in the park, and he was abandoned, and he had lots and lots of cuts and bruises like he was kicked from houses. So, a girl whose name was Rani came with her parents to the park and saw this puppy. So, then she asked her parents, “Can I keep this puppy? Because if I don’t clean it up, it’ll just die, because it has too many cuts and bruises.”
So, she took it home and cleaned all the bruises up and took good care of it. So then, a couple days later, the puppy went missing. So, she put up lots of notices, but no one could find him. Two weeks later she was going to put up a couple more notices when she saw him in the park, abandoned again, the same as he was before. So, she picked him up and took great care of him again. And she never let him out of his set her sight again.
Granny: Never?
Annie: Never.
Granny: Then what happened?
Annie: So, what I get from this story is that… that’s how we are. It’s like we’re away from God, and then in sad times we go to God and He picks us up and gives us hope. But then others pick us up and carry us off to the wrong path, and we get abandoned once again. And then, we need God again so we go to him again. And because we learned from our past, we don’t make the same mistake again and God gives us a home.”
Granny: Wow! that’s amazing. So how did you think of this story?
Annie: I just got inspired when we were going to Dehradun. I was in the car, and I saw this street dog. It was a puppy, a small one, and it was just like this puppy was —abandoned with cuts and bruises.
Granny: Ah, so it really happened?
Annie: Yeah!
Granny: That’s really a nice story. You know Annie, I lost my mother in a tragic way, and an enormous, empty hole was left in my life.
Annie: Wow. I can’t imagine that.
Granny: There was no one to talk to. No one to I share my deepest secrets with. There was no one to understand and console my pain and grief… I lay in the depth of “me”. Not a particularly healthy mind space.
Shall I tell you my remedy?
Annie: Sure.
Granny: I drew a little person on a piece of paper. She lived in my pocket. I pulled her out when I needed a friend (in school or anywhere else…) but always and only in a private spot. I’d Look at her and talk to her. She understood the privacy and secretiveness of our relationship. Nobody knew about her or my darkness.
When I grew older and more mature, my paper doll that I’d kept in my pocket was no longer there. But the feeling of loneliness and daytime-darkness hadn’t gone away. Instead, I kept my little friend in my mind. She never left and was safely invisible to others. The truth is, I still meet her, even though I’m a granny. My friend is still there when I call. 
I can see her. She appears like a silhouette. But I see who she is—she’s me, a dancer. She dances. And when she dances, my own reflection dances. She comes in handy when I lack hope, when despair creeps up on me, or when circumstances say I won’t make it through this one…
I know I’m more than my body and more than life’s situations. I live in the unseen spirit. 
I soak in the overflow. I’m never alone. I don’t exist to live, but am resuscitated, rejuvenated, full of hope and expectation; that’s my dance. God inside me is the choreographer — with greater purposes than just good dance steps! Even the dance is in the unseen. But God sees me dancing, and I’m his puppy who got peace.
