Meeting Pearl: When Answered Prayers Don't Look Like You Expected

Hey y’all, welcome back to Holy Ground Parenting.

This episode is a special one—and an honest one.

Over the past couple of weeks, our family traveled to training to meet Evie’s autism service dog, Pearl. It’s something we prayed for, hoped for, and waited on for a long time. But when the moment finally came… it didn’t look the way I expected.

Evie’s first reaction to Pearl was fear, not excitement. The first several days of training were hard as both Evie and Pearl adjusted—new environment, new routines, and a lot of big emotions. There were moments of discouragement where I wondered if things would ever click.

But slowly, over time, something began to shift.

By the end of our time there, Evie started to feel more comfortable—and on our last night, after everything we had walked through, Pearl climbed into bed with her… and they slept side by side all night.

In this episode, I’m sharing the full story—the hard, the unexpected, and the beautiful reminder that sometimes answered prayers don’t come instantly… they’re built over time.

If you’re in a season where something isn’t going the way you hoped, I pray this episode encourages you to trust that God is still working in the process.

Because sometimes the most meaningful things in life don’t happen all at once—they grow, little by little.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hey y'all, welcome back to Holy Ground Parenting. I'm your host, Marie Kennedy, and I'm so glad you're here. This episode is a really special one. And if I'm being honest, it did not go the way that I thought it would. And the way that this episode has developed has not been the way I thought it would either, which is just kind of par for the course. So over the past couple of weeks, our family has been at training for Evie's service dog, and we've officially met her dog, Pearl. And when I started to write this script and develop this episode, I had a completely different direction in mind because I thought that training was going to go a completely different way. And so I really had to pivot and change the way that I was developing this because training did not go the way that I thought it was going to go. I had this picture in my head of what I thought that it would look like and what I thought Evie meeting Pearl would look like. And it was not that way. I thought that it would be like an instant connection. I thought there would be excitement and like this beautiful emotional moment where everything just clicked, and Evie was just so in love with Pearl, and they were just best friends right off the bat. And that is not how it started at all. And I know that I make posts on social media and we, you know, we post pictures, and we are, we're so excited, and we're so proud of Evie and everything that she's done. She worked really, really hard over the past couple of weeks at training. Uh, but like I said, it did not go how I pictured it in my mind. And Evie's personality is you never really know like how she's going to react to things. There's things that I would think that she would be terrified of that she's not scared of at all. And then there's things that I would not think that she would be scared of at all. And she is completely terrified of. For instance, a couple of years ago, she was absolutely terrified by the Christmas tree. Terrified. We we I think it took us like four hours just to unpack the Christmas tree because she was scared of it. It was something new in her space that she was that she didn't remember from the year before. And it scared her so bad. And like I said, it took us like four hours to unpack the Christmas tree just to get her comfortable with it slowly. And over time, she became comfortable comfortable with it. And then she loved she loved it. She loved having it up, and then she got upset whenever we ended up having to take it down after Christmas. Uh, but when Evie first met Pearl, she was scared, and it honestly kind of caught me off guard because, like I said, you don't really know like how she's going to react sometimes. And I think one of the biggest things was that Pearl didn't look like what Evie was expecting, and you could really see it in her face, and she didn't really know what to do with it. Uh, she we prepared her, she's seen pictures of Pearl, but I think just like her size and her actually being like there in real life, it just it it caught Evie off guard and and she was just very uh she just like went very inward. She she didn't really want to look at her, she didn't really want to like give her treats. She was scared of you know her size, she was scared to get too near to her. Um she would throw treats like down on the floor, but like she didn't want like her to lick her or to get dog slobber on her, you know, she's just being a dog. Uh, and so it was all those things that it was very overwhelming the first day. Um, the first few days really. They they were very, very hard at training. And and training, I mean, it's it's pretty intensive. I mean, it's it's all day, every day. You have one day off in 10 days of training. Uh, and so Evie was out of her routine, she was out of her environment because we had to travel to Ohio for the training. And she so she was out of her comfortable space trying to process something that was completely new to her. And the second so the first day we got there, she got to meet Pearl, and you know, we all got to meet her and and uh, you know, she got to like feed her breakfast and she got to hang out with her for a little bit, but she didn't come home or to our Airbnb uh that night. It wasn't until the next night. Um, so then the next night she came home, and you know, Pearl was also adjusting. Uh, and so uh so it was just a lot. It was just a lot of newness and and new things, new environment, um, not being in routine. And so you had two beings that were both pretty anxious and both trying to figure each other out. And so that led to a lot of dysregulation. Um, there were a lot of emotions, there were a whole lot of moments where I thought, this is not going how I pictured it, this is not what I had in my mind that this experience was going to be like, and I don't really know what to do. And if I'm being really honest, there were plenty of moments during those 10 days that felt really, really long. There were lots of moments where I felt pretty discouraged. Uh, where I questioned, you know, did we do the right thing? You know, I prayed every day. I prayed, you know, God, just, you know, show, show me what to do. You know, is this the right thing? Should we just pack up and go home and say that this is not for us? But we've spent three years trying to get here and we can't really do that. You know, we've had all this support from our community and from our families, and like we can't just throw our hands up and and say, nope, like we made a mistake. This is not for us. You know, we can't really do that. And I don't want to do that because I think that this could be very beneficial for our family and for Evie. But there were so many moments throughout those 10 days of training that I had this exact same thought process going through my mind. Because whenever you've prayed for something for so long, and then it finally comes, it finally is happening, but it's harder than you expected it to be. That can be pretty pretty confusing. And something that I've learned throughout this process and that I'm still learning, is that sometimes answered prayers don't show up the way that we imagined. And I feel like I've known that. I feel like that's kind of like a running theme for my life and our life and our f you know, our journey as a family. Um you know, there've been lots of times throughout our marriage, throughout our development from you know, growing as a couple to being married to being parents, where there's been lots of times where things didn't happen exactly the way that we thought that they would. Or, you know, we've seen answered prayers, but it didn't happen the way that we thought that it would happen. Um sometimes things come with a process, and I and I knew that this whole service dome journey would be a process. I mean, it's been a process up until this point. So I I knew that that would continue. Um, but I guess I I guess just thinking about it and then like living it in real time, uh, and living it in in real life other than just like thinking about it, uh, it it's different, you know. And so, like I said, sometimes they come with a process, they come with adjustment, uh, with growth, with discomfort before connection. And that's kind of what our episode is focusing on today. So the title of the episode today, I don't think I ever said, is uh Meeting Pearl when Answered Prayers Don't Look Like You Expected. And it and this goes far beyond just the service dog journey. This is really applicable to, you know, your everybody's everyday life, you know, lots of things. Every time we get an answered prayer, it's not always going to be exactly how we pictured it. And also towards the end of our time in Ohio, I could see something starting to shift with Evie and with Pearl. Evie began to get more comfortable uh with Pearl. You could see her letting her guard down a little and starting to trust her. You could see Pearl trying to connect with Evie so bad. She would bring her like a ball or a toy, you know, and try try to connect with Evie. And, you know, if it was slobbery, obviously she didn't want to touch it. Uh and um, and so we just kind of would let them do it in their own way, and you could see Pearl also like backing up, like she wanted to connect with Evie, but she didn't want to like force it. So you could see her, like she would bring her a ball or she would bring her a toy and like drop it at her feet rather than trying to get Evie to take it out of her mouth. So you could see them starting to learn each other and starting to build that connection there. And and then on our last night there before graduation, after everything we had walked through that week, um, where we've had like some super rough nights and lots of you know emotions, like I talked about, Evie fell asleep that last night, and then Pearl climbed up in the bed with her, and they slept there together all night. It was the best night that they had had the the whole time, and it was really precious to see. It was a precious moment, and as a mom, it really meant everything to me because it wasn't forced, it it wasn't rushed, it was built over time, and it reminded me of of something very important connection doesn't always happen instantly, and and God's plans are not on our time. Sometimes connection is formed slowly through patience, through through those hard days. And even though you know we had hard days through showing up again and again. And so that's where this episode started to develop and focus around our scripture for the day, and our scripture comes out of Psalms, it's uh Psalms 37, 5, and it says, Commit your way to the Lord, trust in Him. And actually, let me should have been prepared. I'm still really exhausted, and uh I'm one of those people that like whenever I come in from a trip, I want to get like everything like packed and washed immediately and get everything like back to normal. And that did not happen this time because I don't know if it's just me getting older or it was just a really long two weeks. But I just now, like two days later, have finished unpacking and am still working on the laundry. Um, okay. Psalms 37.5. Commit everything you do to the Lord, trust him, and he will help you. I feel like this verse, I feel like I should have like printed this verse out or wrote this verse down and put it up everywhere in our Airbnb because it seriously encompasses the way that I've felt over the past couple of weeks. I committed this journey to him, I committed this process to him, and and and I've trusted God, not just with the outcome, but with the whole process itself. So and and I and I'm seeing, I'm seeing in real time the the results of that. If something that you have prayed for feels harder than you thought it would be, or it's it feels like your prayers are being answered, but not in the way or in the in the way that you thought that they would look like. I just want to gently remind you that doesn't mean that that it's not good. And it doesn't mean that God isn't in it. Every day throughout training, I saw God working in our process. And like I said, I would pray that if this was in his will to work, that we'd start to see some positive changes. And we did. If that's not seeing your prayers being answered in real time, I I don't know what is. And like I mentioned, we still have some work to do, we still have uh, you know, a process to go through to grow their bond and and to get them more comfortable with each other. Particularly Evie. I mean, I feel like Pearl, I feel like she would love for Evie to love her, you know. And so that's what we're gonna continue to to work on. And actually, so actually Pearl had to stay in Ohio to finish her training because she wasn't originally supposed to be Evie's service dog. I think I may have mentioned that before, but she originally was not the the dog that they had matched for Evie. Um, but that dog that they had matched for Evie ended up not working out. And so um Pearl was not supposed to be ready, I think, until July. Uh, and so she graduated, we did everything, but um she's she still has some training hours that she has to complete. Uh, so she had to stay in Ohio to finish her training. And if I'm being honest, I'm really hoping that the distance um will help their bond once they're once they are reconnected. Stephen and I both, we were hopeful and trusting God in this process. And we're trusting in this process too. I mean, we're we're you know, talking to the trainers, talking to the professionals through the organization, you know, to to see, you know, what can we do? What can what what are our options? What do we do here? Um because we just want to do anything and everything we can to help Evie thrive and have the best life possible. And I feel like that's most parents, especially parents with kids with special needs, or uh parents with kids on the autism uh spectrum. And we we made so many great connections in class and met so many amazing people and learned about their life and their stories and their kids. And I mean, I feel I said this like on somebody's post on Facebook, but I feel like we kind of trauma bonded because we all were going through similar experiences. Now, uh, they're definitely not every single kid up there had the same experience as Evie for sure, but um, you know, they definitely it was definitely an adjustment period for every single family, um, you know, getting to know their dog and their dog getting to know them. And so I feel like we all bonded and they were amazing. And I hope that I'm able to stay connected to them forever because I really loved meeting everybody. If anybody from class is listening, I really loved meeting everybody and getting to know you and getting to know your families and and your precious kids. And like I said, we're still just trusting in this uh process and we're trusting in God and hope hoping that once Pearl does finish her hours in Ohio and she comes to us in Mississippi, that her and Evie, you know, absence makes the heart grow fonder, hopefully, hopefully in this case, uh, as well. And that once they see each other again, maybe it will be like I thought, you know, maybe they will, you know, be so excited to see each other and and have a great bond and and go on lots of adventures and and have a wonderful life together. That's my hope. And if it doesn't happen that way, then you know it'll it's gonna happen the way that it's supposed to happen. I I firmly believe that. So I'd love to hear from you. Uh, this is not the longest episode that I've done for sure. I it's just I'm still tired, y'all. And it's just been a really long two weeks. We're exhausted still. Uh, and we had to hop right back into school and ABA, and actually, Evie starts T-ball this week, and and so we just hopped back into our busy life. Uh, and so this is not the longest episode, definitely for sure, and not the most Bible forward episode. But like I said, that that scripture in Psalms 37-5 just really, really, really encompasses how I've felt over the past couple of weeks because I've definitely been like, God, I'm giving this to you. I need your help. I I I don't know what to do here. I don't know what to do. Uh, that's literally been probably the phrase that I've said the most the past two weeks. But I'd love to hear from you. So, have you ever experienced something that didn't go the way you expected at first, but it turned into something beautiful over time? Sometimes the most meaningful connections in our lives aren't the ones that happen instantly, they're the ones that are built little by little. So let's go to the Lord in prayer and talk to talk to God about it. Father God, thank you for being present, not just in the outcomes we hope for, but in the process it takes to get there. Lord, you see the moments where things don't go the way we. Expected the moments where we feel discouraged or confused or unsure. And yet you're still working. And I still know that you're working. God, thank you for the ways that you build things slowly in our lives, for the connections, the growth, the breakthroughs that come through patience and time. Help us to trust you, not just when things feel easy, but when they feel uncertain. Remind us that you're in every step of the journey and that what you're building is good, even when it doesn't look the way we imagined at first. We thank you for the gift of Pearl and for all the people who have poured love and care and training into her. And we thank you, God, for the bond that I feel like is growing between Evie and Pearl. We trust you with everything that's still unfolding. We trust you with this whole process. In Jesus' holy and precious name we pray. Amen. Thank you so much for spending this time with me today on Holy Ground Parenting. If this episode resonated with you, I'd love for you to join our Holy Ground Parenting Facebook group where we share stories and where we're all just walking through this special needs parenting journey together. And if you haven't already, it would mean so much if you left a review. It helps more parents find this space. And remember, sometimes the most beautiful things in life aren't instant, they're built over time. I'll see you next time. And bye bye. Goodbye. Goodbye.