When Love Is Bigger Than What You Can Provide

A few days ago, I held my dog while I genuinely believed I might be watching him die.
Even writing that sentence is difficult.

Kuruk suddenly became extremely unwell. At one point, I was sitting on the floor with him, watching his eyes roll back, watching his body struggle, and pleading with God…
Please don’t take my dog.

I prayed to God, my spirit team, my ancestors, my angels. Anyone I believed might be listening.
Please.
Please let him stay.

And then I did one of the only things I knew how to do.
I turned on my Reiki so fucking fast.

I sat there like a fucking Care Bear, hands on my dog, imagining every bit of loving, healing energy I could possibly access flowing through me and into him.
Fight.
Stay.
Please stay.

I don’t know what role, if any, Reiki played in what happened physically in Ruk’s body that day.
I can’t know that.

What I do know is that in a moment when I felt completely powerless, it gave me somewhere to put my love.

And there was so much love.

There was also something else sitting in that room with me… Guilt.

Because the truth that I have struggled to even say out loud is that I didn’t have the financial resources to simply pick Kuruk up, rush him to an emergency veterinarian and say, Do whatever you need to do. We’ll figure out the money later.

There was no “figure it out later.”
The money wasn’t there.
And that has been incredibly difficult for me to sit with.

Because when someone depends on you, whether that’s your child, your animal, or anyone you have taken responsibility for, there is this expectation we carry:
I am supposed to be able to take care of you.
I am supposed to protect you.
I am supposed to provide what you need.

And when circumstances make that impossible, it can very quickly become:
I failed you.
That’s the part I have been sitting with.

When Kuruk came into my life, my circumstances were different.
I couldn’t have known everything that would happen afterward. I couldn’t have known that an accident would change my brain, my ability to work, my income, my capacity and so much of the life I thought I was going to have.

And yet understanding how I got here doesn’t automatically remove the guilt.
Healing doesn’t always work like that.

Sometimes our rational mind can understand something long before our heart is ready to release it.
I can understand that I didn’t choose the circumstances that changed my financial security.
I can understand that struggling financially does not mean I don’t love my animals.
I can understand that money and love are not the same thing.
And I can still wish desperately that I had been able to provide more in that moment.

Both things can be true.

Maybe that’s part of what I’m learning through this.

Sometimes love is bigger than what we are able to provide.
And that is fucking painful.

Because love makes us want to fix things.
Love makes us want to protect.
Love makes us want to take suffering away from the beings we care about.

But sometimes we can’t.

Sometimes there isn’t a solution sitting within our control.
Sometimes all we have is our presence.

So I stayed.
I held him.
I talked to him.
I prayed.
I gave him Reiki.
I watched him breathe.
I paid attention to every movement.
I celebrated every little sign that seemed to say he was still fighting.
And I loved him.

Not because I believed love alone guaranteed that everything would be okay.
But because love was what I had to give him.

Kuruk is still here as I write this, snuggled up next to me as he usually is.
We are 1 week past the event and he has fully recovered. I am incredibly grateful.

I also know I am still recovering from what happened.
There is relief.
There is gratitude.
There is fear.
And there is still some guilt that I am working my way through.

I’m not going to wrap that guilt in a pretty spiritual lesson and pretend I’ve completely released it because I haven’t.
Maybe I don’t need to yet.

Maybe coming home to yourself sometimes means being willing to sit beside the parts of yourself that are hurting without immediately trying to convince them that they shouldn’t hurt.

I can remind myself that I love my dog.
I can acknowledge that I wanted desperately to give him something I couldn’t provide in that moment.
And I can recognize what I did give him.
My hands.
My prayers.
My energy.
My attention.
My presence.
My love.

Sometimes we cannot control what happens to the beings we love.
Sometimes we cannot provide everything we desperately wish we could.

But perhaps there is something sacred in refusing to leave them alone in the uncertainty.
Sometimes all we can do is stay.
And sometimes staying is an act of love too.

A Question for Reflection
Have you ever carried guilt because you couldn’t give someone you love what you desperately wanted to give them?
What might change if, alongside everything you wish you could have done, you also allowed yourself to acknowledge everything you did give?