November 10, 1970

After spending time with Baron, we always missed him more. But this time, after returning to Champaign, we got to enjoy another doggie, which took our minds off him.

Snoopy, a Beagle, belonged to one of my students. Jill was the daughter of old friends from Moody Church, and it was a happy coincidence that she landed in my kindergarten class.

One day her mom came to school to ask a favor. Would Nate and I be willing to keep Snoopy for a while so they could go on a family trip? We jumped at the idea, and in a few days, we had a foster puppy.

Snoopy made himself right at home and got us out walking multiple times every day. We were learning that we didn’t have to own a dog to get a doggie-fix every now and then.

We made another canine pal after I became friends with a teacher at my school named Barbara. She and her husband Rick lived in Danville, and we began asking them over for dinner here and there. One night when they had a power outage, they came and slept over. We used the time to plot and film a primitive home movie.

Whenever Barbara and Rick came, they brought their dog Inka, much to our delight. Inka knew lots of tricks, and Nate loved moving her through her repertoire. Though our landlord didn’t allow live-in dogs, we didn’t think he’d mind a visitor now and then – and we loved having both Snoopy and Inka come over.

Nate’s studying was intensifying as the end of law school approached (January), and he had multiple papers due. Dog-walking was a nice diversion, and during Snoopy’s stay, he and Nate became good buddies. I think Nate actually enjoyed having someone to talk to while I was in Danville.

As the studying intensified, Nate would sometimes have to work well into the night. We’d have an extra-long prayer time on those days, though, just before I went to bed, asking God to give him efficiency, high quality work, and energy.

One morning I found a note taped to the bathroom mirror.

“Baby, thank you for the prayer last evening. I am more thankful every day that there is Unity in our marriage. I persevered until 3:30. Please wake me up at 7:00. I have to do footnotes. Love forever, Nate.”

We couldn’t wait till we were finished with school and out in the real world where paychecks would replace tuition payments and grades would be no more. And once we were settled, we might even be able to own a dog.

“Patient endurance is what you need now.” (Hebrews 10:36)