That gate was meant to protect...

We bring her to a new house with new corners to explore and a whole pile of boxes perfect for hiding and a rug rolled tight into a tunnel for ambushes and sneak attacks, and all Vesper wants is to jump the low fence into the kitchen, where appliances hide death motors on their dark undersides.

All she saw was the dark coolness calling her, a sort of tunnel her instincts told her to seek out. I saw the motors, the fan blades.

I spent all evening near the fence, pulling her down time and time again, a short-term solution to a long-term problem. I tried distraction; I tried scolding. But the only place she wanted to be was the one place I said she couldn’t go.

My husband said he thought animals must have sin natures, just like us.

And standing there against the wall, watching her obstinate attempts to cross to a place where I knew injury or death was waiting, I thought of all the times I blindly flung myself against a closed door to get something I was convinced I needed.

And I wondered what was on the other side that I couldn’t see; and what dangers lurked in the shadows of what I thought was good.

“Do not be like the horse or like the mule, which have no understanding, which must be harnessed with bit and bridle, else they will not come near you,” the psalmist writes.

Or like a ferret, also without understanding, who runs headlong into death.

Sometimes God puts obstacles in our paths to grow our strength, so that in fighting through them we become stronger, more battle-ready.

Other times it’s a closed gate to separate us from disaster.

I just hope I’m in tune enough with Him to know the difference. And that he keeps pulling me down from the fence when I get too close to the edge.