My mother died like two years ago. And I had had a really rough time with it. She had an unexpected surgery that she had to have, 22 days later, she passed away. And so I had cried and cried and cried. And, you know, everybody says, “Oh, God doesn’t put more on you than what you can handle?” Well, I was like, I’m gonna tell you what, He has pushed His luck a couple of times. Because I don’t know that I can handle it. And I can’t handle it on my own. I can only handle it with Him. It’s like, I had just been through a lot. I’d been through a bad divorce. I had been through my mother dying. And I, you know, sometimes you’re just tired. And you’re just, you just can’t figure out how come you keep struggling. I couldn’t figure out why he was leaving me here.  I had prayed the night before. I’m telling you, until I cried myself to sleep. 

The next morning, I get up, I let the dogs out. Which, I have one that’s half Rottweiler, half Lab; so she’s huge. And then my nephew was here with his medium sized dog. And then I have a little bitty Chihuahua. So my trend is to get up, usually it’s between five and six o’clock, in the morning. But this morning was a Sunday morning. So it was around seven, I go down the hall and let the dogs out. And there’s this flutter like, China breaking. I turn around and there is a dove. So I went and called my sister and I said, “I have a dove in my house.” And she said, “Well, shoo it out.” and I said, “No, you don’t understand.” And so I hung up from her and I was like, Oh my, how did you get in here? You know? You didn’t fly in, because you would have passed me and I would have seen that. You didn’t walk in because the dogs would eat you. All the windows are shut. How did you get in here? I even opened up my cabinets to look and see if there was, there was a hole somewhere. And there wasn’t! There was not a hole anywhere. 

So I called the police department. I said, “You guys have got to come and help me get this bird, this dove out of my house and they said the same thing, “Shoo it out.” I said,  “No, no. I can’t shoo it out. It’s on my sink and there’s not a window and… I had yelled at the boys – my nephew was here – You two were up late last night. You left the door open or something. And so Ryan got in, he got in his wheelchair and came in there. He said, “Mom, I promise you we did not leave any doors open.” So anyway, I called the police department and they sent the animal control out. And she brought out, I mean, a little net. And I was thinking that’s not going to catch anything but okay, he’s not flown yet. It just stands there and just looks at me. This dove, I’m telling you, did not…Never flinched. Never moved a muscle. Just, I mean… 

She pulled him over there. He got into that, he got into that net. Never, you would have thought, you know, if you’ve ever caught a bird. They’re like all over the place and flying, not this one. Never, never moved. It came right over, snuggled right up next to her. And I was like, I was just amazed. I think she was too because she kept saying, “That’s a dove!” And I said, “I know it’s a dove. I’m trying to figure out how it got in here.” But then I reached over and started petting it. It never offered to bite me. We always had parrots or parakeets or cockatiels or something when we were growing up. So I’ve been bit many times by a bird and I’m telling you, if they take off and fly…It’s, that’s all I could think about is, this is going to be an act trying to catch this. But I noticed when I walked over to him or her I don’t know which one it was. It never, it never fluttered. It never, it never flapped its wings. It never tried to bite. It just sat there looking at me as if to say, “Here’s your peace. It’s okay.” You So when she pulled that, pulled it over to her, and I reached over and started petting it, I knew. I knew this was my peace. 

So she walked outside. We walked from the kitchen all the way outside and it never moved a muscle. She put it up in her hand, held her hand out like that, put it up, lifted it up, and I’m telling you, that bird just poof, flew back up and into the east and it was just like, it just disappeared. I have been at peace ever since. Now it took me a while; I was in shock and I went to church. And I never said a word to anybody. And I actually didn’t say a word to anybody for probably two weeks, because I thought people are gonna think I’m crazy now, because they didn’t see it. Ryan had enough sense to take a picture of it. You know, no bird poop. No big feathers, just little bitty tiny feathers that you could just barely see. I picked them up with a piece of tape where I could keep them. That’s the only thing that I had, that that bird was in there. And everybody said, “Oh, well, it just flew in from somewhere.” I said, “if it had flown in with a half Rottweiler – half Lab, she’d killed it. Because she knows everything that goes on and she didn’t. And it did not flutter until I opened that door and let those dogs out, that’s when the action started. But I am a firm believer. 

So I went to church, and I listened to the sermon. My sister was with me and she kept looking at me. Because it was a, it was a sermon on peace in faith. So about two weeks later, I put it, I wrote it out and put it [the story] on Facebook. And I got so many comments from it. But even my dad said, “Oh, it, it probably just walked in.” And I was like, “I’m sorry, it didn’t walk in. You don’t know what I went through that night before. If you had my feelings and knew my cry.” I know what that was. It is, it’s been a totally peaceful time since, since He sent me my dove. A totally peaceful time and every day, I’m not dreading. I don’t, you know, I don’t think about, ‘this is never going to end.’ You know, ‘You’re gonna keep me here forever.’ It’s like, Okay, I’m living this life because this is the life You want me to. You have something out there for me and I have a purpose. And I’m going to find it, because You’re gonna lead me to it.