BE STILL

Psalm 46:10 Be still and know that I am God.

God is in the quiet places and I have a hard time slowing down enough to spend time there.

Yesterday, it was my job to fill the four gigantic water troughs for the sheep. This is a task that takes about ten minutes. Ten minutes of  watching water surge into plastic ponds. Ten minutes of  fidgeting, standing on one leg and then the other and thinking about all there is yet to be done.

It is so hard for me to reach the state of quiet that allows me to hear anything other than the clamor of my life. But, as I stood at those four troughs, I thought about my husband, whose job it usually is to fill them. About how he leans on the fence as he holds the hose just so. About how he gazes at the fields in front of him, the mountains piled up beyond them and the sky arching over all of it. I asked him once what he thought about while standing at that fence staring out at the world and he said, "Nothing. I don't think about anything."

So, as I stood at the fence, I practiced quieting my mind. I let the sound of sheep slurping be the only background noise. I let the mountains and fields, quiet before the great spring unfolding, send their silence into my soul. I gave myself permission to just be. 

And God stepped in and said, "I am enough. I AM."

May you find a quiet spot for your soul today.

Sticky Hands and Stinky Knees

 

It's lambing season. Our farm has 170 ewes. A  birthing  average worth bragging about would be two lambs per ewe, but nature has a way of skewing the odds a little lower.

For instance, last week we had a snowstorm. The thirty sheep on pasture in front of our house are due to lamb in March. But somehow a roaming Romeo found at least one of them, and she gave birth to twins in whiteout conditions. One of the twins made it. The other stepped into a deep cow track and couldn’t get out.

We weren’t even aware that they were out there until a neighbor called. Other than feeding them once a day, these sheep don’t get much of our attention,. Their sisters in the maternity barn need us more. So, by the time we retrieved the one live lamb, it was cold and hungry.

Mama and baby were herded to our woodshed. The ewe was interested in her lamb, which isn’t always the case. She nosed him, nickered and pranced whenever we got near. And, baby was hungry. He bawled and sucked our fingers. But, he couldn’t seem to make sense of his mama’s udder. Cold had dulled his instincts.

Joe grabbed the ewe by the neck and manhandled her into a corner. He pushed his knee into her side to hold her there while I dropped to my knees in the hay.With my head pressed against her hip, I stuffed the baby’s head under his mama’s belly. He rooted around, grabbed a hunk of wool and started sucking. Right idea, wrong location.

So, I pushed his mouth right next to a teat,  pried his mouth open with my thumb and pointer finger and then jammed the teat into his mouth. He slurped, spit it out, and grabbed wool again.

We repeated this process until my back was in knots and my neck was cracking. Mama Ewe was pretty patient, but eventually she began kicking at her baby every time I pushed the teat in his mouth. 

After about fifteen minutes, the hungry lamb butted his mama’s udder, wiggle-waggled his tail, and started sucking in earnest. When I let go of him, he bawled, lost the teat and sucked wool again.

I stayed beside him as long as my achy back would let me, then stood up and stretched. Baby backed away, too, but he shook his whole body: a good sign that a lamb has eaten his fill.

I studied the knees of my coveralls. They were covered in shit, and my hands were covered with sticky colustrum  and bits of hay.

By the next morning, the lamb was making it on his own and we turned his momma and him out two days later.

Every lambing season is like this. There are always lambs to help. It is a frustrating, stinky, back-cramping job. But the reward is the field full of lambs I watched running in the sun, yesterday.  They played follow the leader, pounding across the lot, skidding around a tree, and then galloping pell-mell back to their mamas who were chewing their cuds and gossiping by the fence. The lambs blew steam in the cold air, panted, and then took off again.

Sticky hands and stinky knees always remind me that there is always some good that comes with the bad. That hard things just need to be done. That we aren’t really in control of anything. 

 

DRIVING LESSONS

See the driveway in the picture above? That’s my driveway. You can only see about a fourth of it from the picture and it looks pretty drive-able, doesn’t it?  Most of the snow appears to have melted so it seems like any driver with four-wheel drive should be able to navigate their way out to the road with ease.

I’m not just any driver. I am a lily-livered, ice-phobic, scaredy cat. Plus, the first section of this driveway faces south. It melts off quickly making it incredibly deceptive. At the top of that hill, there is a slight turn to the left. You must make that turn while your  back wheels are desperately trying to gain traction on the last fragment of still-ice covered slope. And you are turning on to an extremely slick  section that has definite opinions about your right to stay on the road at all.

Further down, there is a sneaky straight stretch with lots of ice lining the three inch deep tire tracks. That ice is just the right height to push your tender sidewalls around, jouncing the car from one side of the track to the other.

Below that? Another icy turn that never receives sun. It is tilted the wrong way and wants nothing more than to throw your car over the very steep embankment to the left. I once left a vehicle seesawing on the ledge: two wheels spinning in open air.

Finally, the last  downhill slope, the one that leads to the hardtop road, could qualify as a luge run in the Olympic Games. It’s straight, so you’re okay if you don’t use your brakes. Just better hope there are no cars barreling towards you as you reach the finish line. You won’t be able to stop.

Okay, okay! My husband would tell you that my description of this driveway is exaggerated. Supreme hyperbole! But, he’s not me. He grew up driving in snow and ice on curvy, treacherous roads. I did not. I learned in driver’s school how to turn my car into the slide if ice took over, but that doesn’t work on my driveway. Turning into the slide just insults the ice walls lining the track and they push back, forcing your back end even further towards that precipitous drop.

So, today, I had driving school with my snow and ice certified driving husband. He made me drive in and out of the driveway four times in a row. By the second time, my palms were so slick that they were sliding around on the steering wheel and my knees were like noodles in a pot of boiling water.

With instructions as vague as “Stay in the track!” which I thought I was trying to do, he coaxed me up, over and through.  Now, I am safely home, in my office, staring at my nemesis out the window. After four trips out to the mailbox and back, you would think I would be brimming with the confidence to tackle that driveway and get to work tomorrow. But, I am not.

When I ride with my hubby, in and out, I close my eyes and say a little prayer until we roll to a stop at the end. I can’t do that when I am behind the wheel, although perhaps the result would be better and my wheels would just follow the track on their own accord.

We’ll see what happens tomorrow. You say a prayer for me, and I'll wear a seatbelt. And, if it’s too bad, I will abandon it all and walk back in.