DOWN HOME: No, Topanga, leave that gecko alone

“Maaaaa-aaaaarv!” Joanna hollered.

You know I have a very short name. Any time someone—especially my wife—pronounces it with more than one syllable and/or takes more than five seconds to say it, I’m usually in trouble.

“Coming!” I shouted back.

This time, knowing what I knew, I figured I wasn’t in trouble. But I thought I might have to do something I didn’t particularly want to do.

“Is it the gecko?” I called out as I walked through the living room and rounded the corner into the bedroom.

“Uh, yes,” Jo said, staring at a little lizard lying on the bedroom floor, just inches from the master bathroom. “I’m afraid it didn’t make it.”

Both of us had seen the little green gecko that evening when we got home from work and changed into comfy clothes. We didn’t know how it got into the house, and particularly how it got all the way back to the master bedroom. But it had made itself at home, and neither of us felt inclined to toss it out or run it off.

Topanga, our dog, wasn’t so keen on the idea, however.

When I was back there, pulling on a long-sleeved T-shirt and getting ready for dinner, Topanga stood over the gecko, bumping him/her/it with her nose.

“No, ’Panga,” I said. “Geckos are our friends. They eat little bugs.”

Topanga looked at me as if to say: “Have you lost your mind? I’m the only four-legged creature who’s welcome in this family.” She walked across the room to her regular spot by the door, but she kept her eyes on that lizard.

Turns out, Jo had a similar conversation with the dog earlier, when she changed clothes back there, too. “Geckos eat bugs, Topanga,” she said. “Leave it alone.”

Topanga followed me to the kitchen and hung around for awhile as Jo and I dug into tamales covered in chile, with black beans on the side. I’d been gone to the Texas Baptist convention all week, and neither Jo nor I noticed Topanga slipped away while we caught each other up on all the stuff that happened from Sunday through Wednesday, while I was away.

But after dinner, Jo went to put on a warmer top, and that was when she called out for me. “Maaaaa-aaaaarv!” she said.

I expected to find a dead gecko, but it still was alive, missing one foot. How sensitive are geckos’ central nervous systems? I couldn’t tell if it felt pain, and I didn’t know if it were in any kind of misery. So, I carried it to the backyard and gently placed it in a flower bed, home of yummy bugs.

This little episode with Topanga, Jo and me, and the gecko reminds me of how folks often relate to God and situations in our lives. God tells us to leave things alone, but we just have to have our way. Life would be better if we would just do what our Master tells us to do.