Redemption Story

On Tuesday 10/14/2025 I had an encounter with God in a way I have never experienced Him before. What I had deemed lost and damaged, He restored back to what it used to be. I never had anger issues in my life - at all. I can be very passionate about things, but I wouldn’t really get angry. Neither have I ever used violence toward anyone. That is, until this year. I moved from Philly to Savannah in November 2024 with our entire house and our dog Tobi. My husband was training with the Army in Arizona, and didn’t join us until May 2025. It was just me and the dog. Everyone who’s ever owned a dog knows that there are some dogs that don’t adjust too well when moved into a new place. Mine was one of them. While I myself tried to adjust to the new environment, I started to feel really overwhelmed with everything. Unpacking boxes, setting up my garden and chicken coop, starting a new job and keeping up with Tobi’s changed personality brought me to my limits. I put so much pressure on myself that I was constantly stressed out. I did not seek the Lord in those situations, but relied on myself to get through them. At some point impatience crept in, and I got shorter with Tobi. I spent less time with him, yelled a lot and had him in his crate a majority of the time. I was also very isolated, and due to my husband’s absence was depleted of love and support. This is not to justify what would happen with Tobi, but these were the circumstances. I should have surrendered all of it to God, but didn’t. In my quest to solve everything on my own, I distanced myself from God, and gave a foothold to the enemy. One day, I was so annoyed by just everything and the way Tobi acted, that I lost control of me. I hit the dog in a bout of anger. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. It felt like I wasn’t operating my own hand in that moment. I was so shocked at myself that I started crying right after. I felt guilty and ashamed. It is one thing to be angry, but another to sin in your anger. I was totally aware of that. The Bible warns specifically about situations like this: Ephesians 4:26-27 “Be angry, and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil.” After that I felt even more distant from God (and Tobi), because of the shame I felt. I didn’t think of giving it to Him, and it became a stronghold over time. I didn’t feel able to handle Tobi any longer. The resentment grew, the anger, the shame; everything just got bigger, and I got stuck in a cycle. I wasn’t able to see a way out. I actually thought things would go back to normal as soon as my husband came back, but they didn’t. I told him, if he wants to keep the dog, he will have to take care of him, because I just couldn’t. Any time I would look at him, I would resent him, and at times even hated him. I am fully aware that he didn’t do anything that deserves this. It was entirely my own failure that led to this situation. Tobi was just being the dog he is. He eventually returned to his normal self. But I didn’t. For months we debated if we should give him up for adoption. I just couldn’t see a reconciliation with him at all. My heart was so cold and hard towards Tobi that I didn’t see any other solution than to find a new family for him. My husband finally gave in, because he saw how much it affected me on a daily basis. We asked our old neighbors, on Monday 10/13, if they would like to adopt Tobi. They would have loved to, but are currently not in the position to do so. My next step was to make an Instagram post to see if we can find people to help looking for a new family further up north. I was in the process of collecting photos and videos of Tobi that I would use in the post. I was very determined and ready to put this post up. In the middle of doing so, I started to feel a weird heaviness. And all of a sudden, I burst out in tears. I wasn’t sad or anything, I just started crying out of nowhere. I cried a lot. I cried loud and ugly. The type of crying where you have to remind yourself to keep breathing, but it’s difficult, because all your body wants to do is to keep pushing out this emotion. It lasted one hour. During this hour I asked myself several times why I’d cry like this. I didn’t understand. But it eventually dawned on me that it was because of Tobi. And for the first time I felt the urge to apologize to him. I grabbed him, and hugged him and apologized genuinely. It took another 3 hours to really stop crying. But when it was over, I felt peace. I felt light and free. Forgiven. Redeemed. For the first time in 5 months, I didn’t feel the heaviness of guilt and shame weighing me down. And I knew in this moment that God had delivered me from it all. I am so thankful for the mercy He’s shown me in all of this. I have been stuck in this sin–shame–anger cycle for such a long time, and the only way I saw out of it was to cut off Tobi from our family. BUT GOD. I talked to him more often about Tobi lately, but I never got any type of sign that would show us to keep him regardless of the circumstances. And I knew I wouldn’t have been able to anyway. I was convinced, because He didn’t say anything, that this meant to give Tobi a new home. Not in a million years would I have thought that He would set me free from this intense struggle inside of me. Not only did He forgive me for what I had done to His creation, but He also enabled me to forgive myself for it. Something I was absolutely unable to do on my own. God is so good. He completely reset my relationship to Tobi. The same day I was able to hug him, play with him, and invite him back on our couch. He has never stopped loving me through all of it. I was always his mommy. And now, thank God, I am able to fulfill this role with all my heart. A heart of flesh, and not of stone.