Bella...

Bella... As I write this she is running around on my shoulders and on the couch around me. Every once in a while she stops to chew frantically on the clips that hold my veil in place. She has a thing with clips. I don't know why. She also has a thing with hats/du-rags. Whenever I happen to be wearing one she loves to crawl under it and hide in my hair. Yes I know that most if not all of you are completely freaking out at this point. If you know who Bella is anyway. Bella is my pet rat. 

Let me tell you the story of how Bella came to live with us. You see, I love animals. Truth is I can't live without them. With no living creature to call mine a piece of me dies. I'v fought this reality but it remains a reality. Firm and unmoving. So I deal with it. When Jewel and I moved to this house both dogs and cats were out of the question. We couldn't have dogs outside and we didn't want one in the house. We certainly did not want a cat in the house! So a few months after moving into our new place, when it became abundantly clear that my sanity was not going to survive our severe lack of animal presence, we set out to get a hamster. Which is when we started running into snags. Evidently hamsters are notorious for biting children and being generally unfriendly and unholdable. These were problems. So we looked at mice. Same problems. We considered guinea pigs. That was a no go. I just couldn't get attached feeling. Then I met Bella. The people at the pet store had told me that rats are the best pocket pets. I dismissed this tid bit of knowledge without even considering it. I mean duh hello WHO in their right mind has a pet rat! Right? (Yes I know that some of you are hardily agreeing with this statement). But on a whim, while I was drooling over the darling hamsters that I now knew I couldn't have, I peeked into the rat pen. And there she was. Her big brown eyes looked at me from her silky dark face and her long whiskers twitched nervously. I knew. Not a doubt in my mind, that was my rat. "I want that one!" I said to the pet store worker. "Are you sure? She is a lot more timid than the others. She seems nervous. She may never tame down like the others would." But my heart was set. Now let me tell you a little secret about me. When I touch an animal, I fall in love with it. My youth group has this joke, any time they see a stray dog or cat they go "Dayna DON'T touch it!!!" But with Bella, I was in love before she ever wrapped her tiny paws around my finger. So, after much work and struggle, the pet store workers got Bella's new home assembled and got her into it. I paid the $10 dollars that she cost along with all the other fees that go with a new pet, and we headed home. I held her the whole way. She sneezed violently at me from behind the bright purple bars of her new house and I stuck my pinky finger through the bars to be sniffed. I felt like a kid again! 

Now I'v made a lot of investments in my life. Some of them have been great, some of them not so much. I'v adopted a lot of animals. I'v loved a lot of canines, felines, bovines, equines, a few fowl, a couple of lizards, and even one serpent. But the only animal I'v ever gone into a pet store and bought, is Bella. And you know what? I have never, not for one little minute, regretted that I bought her. Sure the first two or three weeks, as we learned to know and love one another, were rough. I had a lot to learn about being a pocket pet owner. But I never wished I could take her back. Never wished her out of my life. Never wished that I did not own this completely weird pet. And, truth be told, I'v never even been ashamed of owning her. Let me tell you some of the things that owning Bella has taught me and maybe you'l understand that. 

See, the thing is that owning Bella makes me even more weird than I already am. Owning Bella is like this giant sticker on me that reads "Is Not Afraid to Do as She Wishes" in huge glittering gold letters. Owning Bella puts me on the 'slightly nuts or completely crazy' pile. And guess what? I'v learned that I really like it here. There are people who truly hate Bella. They would dearly love to kill her. I get that. But she is mine and therefor no one can touch her. There are people who don't like Bella but they tolerate her because she is mine. There are people who actually like Bella. And then, there are the few and far between people who just accept her for who and what she is and enjoy her for who and what she is, and do not let the fact that she is mine affect how they view me as a person at all. These are my favorite people. These are the people I want to be like. Because you know what? Not everyone owns a pet rat. But everyone has something, lots of things probably, that is weird about them. We just hide them. We don't talk about how much we love to do the things that are not considered 'cool' or how much we enjoy hobbies our friends think are stupid, or how deeply we feel about helping homeless people. Instead we box ourselves neatly into plain brown boxes and we line our lives up carefully so that we fit. If we are brave we may paint our boxes with plaid or stripes or even hearts or stars or bubbles. But we have boxes. Except some people don't. And the people who don't have boxes generally don't expect others to have boxes either. These people are exceptionally disconcerting to the rest of us who really want to stay fit inside our boxes. They LIVE. They do what they want when they want. No not to the extent that they hurt others, but in such a way that they actually do what makes them come alive, not what other people think is cool. I met someone like that recently. I'l call him Strider. He strolled into my kitchen, walked up to Bella's pen, got down on eye level with her and said "Well, hello there Ms. Bella". I couldn't believe my ears! He is still astonishing me. :) I spent the next 3 months trying to fit him into a box. Every time I tried, the box just burst. You can't fit someone into a box when they don't care what others think of them and when they don't judge others. I kept saying to my mom "I don't know what to DO with him!" People like Strider have a way of breaking what we consider normal all to bits. Owning Bella has shown me, very clearly, the differences in people. I catch hash about Bella all the time. Some of it is all in good fun and I laugh, some of it is hurtful and makes me angry. There are people who truly are convinced that I am crazy because I have a pet rat ant THEY hate rats. Rats don't fit in their boxes and if something doesn't fit in their box it must be bad. Right? WRONG!!! God did not make rectangular shaped people. He did not create us to fit in boxes. I for one really want to do better at being like Strider. He's actually an awful lot like Jesus. I think Jesus likes Bella. I think Jesus likes when people like strange kinds of music or burnt marshmallows or playing in the rain or rearranging furniture in the middle of the night or any and all other things that we think make us weird. Jesus is out of the box. He wants out of the box children and followers. He wants followers who do not judge each other based on how we fit into our boxes. I want to be out of the box. Bella has shown me a bit more of what 'out of the box' looks like. 

So to all of you who hate my pet rat, I do apologize that you cant see the beauty in her. And I ask that you keep your opinions to yourself. Bella is mine. I love her. I'm proud of her. She is actually a very cute rat! In my books, Bella is definitely a keeper, and since she belongs to me, its only my opinion about her that matters... Oh and Strider? He's definitely a keeper too. :)