It was 7,300 hours ago when they stood before God and they stood before their families and they stood before their friends… And they said I Do.
They were young and they mostly didn’t know what they were doing but he thought she was beautiful and he knew how to make her laugh… And when they were together they had fun.
Twenty years later, he still does… …and they still do.
Who are you loving long today? How many hours have you had with them? What will you do with the next hour you have with them?
So this morning I drove the twenty miles to town to check the mail …again.
If I were to count the times I’ve driven to our local post office and had my big boy march himself in with the key so that he can be the bearer of good news, -to be the smiling one to bring out the package and hold it up high to reflect its shining light and to hear the singing angel glory; to be the deliverer of the highly awaited package that contains the galley proof of the book that Mama wrote and her babies lived…
…I’d be embarrassed to say that the number is SEVEN.
Seven times in five days.
I’d also be embarrassed to say –but will anyway because hey, we’re in this together- one of those days was a holiday. As in, federal holiday where, no matter their sweet little unofficial motto, (“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds”) the post office was just plain not.delivering.mail.
Can you EVEN?
But we checked the box that day anyway.
Twice.
And now, four days later, today wasn’t the day either.
A little depressed discouragement started to seep its way in as I pulled out in disbelief. I was sure today was going to be the day.
I snort laughed at my children’s suggestion to lay down across the post office parking lot entrance in protest but secretly wondered if it’d speed things up.
I called the printer. It was okay to call them because I’d only called them once this week. They assured me, again, that yes, it’d been sent. Priority Mail. It should be there by tomorrow at the latest.
It’ll be there.
I pouted as I drove to the bank.
It wasn’t fair.
I’d worked so hard.
For so long.
I have things to do. Kids to raise. A farm to tend to. Dinner to make. A house to clean.
I mean, I hadn’t even showered this morning. Heck I hadn’t even fed the kids a real breakfast. I was so sure that our book was going to be here that I’d just rushed everyone on out the door, positive we’d get it when the mail came in, scoot on back home and just carry on with our day, our book on the table for us all to ogle over while we enjoyed a late brunch.
Agitated and ornery, I pulled into the drive-through line at the bank. My mouth set tight into a hard little line of irritation.
This was ridiculous.
I just don’t have time to wait on slow things.
We sit, the line long so we wait some more, and here on the radio comes that song.
That very first song.
The traumatic break-up song, the shame in front of all our friends song, the meeting my new friend song, and then the loving that new friend song.
The one who didn’t make me feel shame or guilt.
The one who thought I was pretty and never even noticed the ugly parts.
I woulda never found you…If he had wanted to stay-ayyy…Ohhh…he hurt me bad in a real good way….
And how is it that we were just driving the dirt roads listening to that song in your old blue pick-up truck while the red dust left big clouds of our youth behind?
Or how is it that just yesterday my first good boss at my first good job would tap her toes when we heard it on the juke box, a swirling croon through the cigarette smoke of the break room and now, today, my kids tap their toes on the dashboard as I follow my last good boss who shepherds me in the best good job I’ll ever have?
It spoke my life then but now…how are we here already?
Over two decades gone by.
So fast.
It was all so fast.
The tears start to come over the quickness of it all and how young we were and how sweet and true the song still is, and there in the drive-through lane next to us pulls up an ambulance, the red sides shining bright as the face of one of our small-town paramedics pokes out the window to deposit his paycheck.
I used to dispatch for him, in another life before babies. My kids ooh and ahh at the heroes in the bank line, the ones their mama has told them all about…
…and then there on the side of their red wagon my eyes fall on the In Memory Of sticker.
Our friend and co-worker that’d been taken too soon and even though it’s been almost eleven years it’s all gone too fast and his name brings more tears right there at the bank because though days can be long and the waiting can go on…
…sometimes it can be too short too.
Too short for his wife.
Too short for his kids.
Too short for his friends.
Too short for his co-workers.
Too short for his community.
I look at the dates on the sticker, his life in a few numbers, and see what we all see when we look back on our life.
It was just too fast.
The sweet mama of four who is dying of cancer and spends her last slow days holding fast to her family and sharing Jesus with the world.
It’s going too fast.
The beautiful friend walking the slow days of an aging mother whose life is just twice the span of what mine is right now. She was just little and her mama was just my age and I bet every slow day she thinks how fast it’s been.
So fast.
And my tears pray quiet for these toe-tapping kids and these left-behind friends and for this mama who marvels that we won’t cling too tight to this life but that we’ll cling tight to the cross because the One who carried it came to make this short life abundant and when He allowed nails to pierce His sinless body He said if we follow Him we’ll be long with Him.
The forever kind of long.
That’s why He came. And these two-thousand years since have been so slow but they’ve been so fast too. The generations that have come and gone…
…the heroes whose lights have been snuffed out too soon…
…the goodness that was too quickly swallowed up by evil…
It’s almost my turn and the ambulance has long gone and we’re to the end of the song and I swipe a finger at the wetness behind my sunglasses and Patty sings on with her sweet fiddle voice…
Oh the river of tears… That flow from my eyes… Was only moving me on… To this paradise…
Yes.
Yes.
And suddenly…quickly…
…my slow book-waiting days don’t seem so slow anymore.
~
You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath. Psalm 39:5
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
Just forty-five short minutes after pushing the Publish button on this post, I shot off to pick up my husband from work. He heard of our morning let-down and though tired from a long week of work, he swung into the post office…just in case.
It seems as though sometimes…some days…twice-per-day mail checks just may turn out to be fruitful!
I named her Lola and had my son put a little red tag around her ankle.
After losing a little chick from the meat flock just a few weeks prior, I didn’t want to lose Lola too. The tiny red band around her yellow leg flopped loosely and she joined the rest of the all-white flock at the feeder.
She was tiny. But she was scrappy.
I liked how her little body would push its way into the sea of white and fight for a place at the feed tray.
We’d purchased the thirty chicks as a summer project after my son raised a small batch for 4-H. They fit perfect on our little farm. They fit perfect in my son’s farmer life. And they were going to fit perfect in our stash of freezer meat.
I didn’t think Lola would make it. When I saw she wasn’t thriving, I thought she’d succumb like the little one I’d named Emily just a month before had. That’s the way of life after all…the sad facts of it…but Lola kept on and she made me smile when she’d shove her little white body to the feeder and climb on the backs of her flock mates to find a spot to eat.
I thought I’d keep her.
She could hobble around with our laying flock and look cute.
She’d be the odd-shaped fat girl in the gang of our lean working hens and she’d remind me of the fight in all of us. The instinct God writes into our cells. To live. To survive.
To grow.
But she didn’t. Along with the rest of her 28 pen mates, Lola stayed too small no matter how much my son increased their feed. The first batch had been fat, robust, healthy and happy, but this batch was two weeks past our scheduled butcher date and still not up to a weight that would bring an expected yield.
We talked to folks who raised chickens. It was a weird summer they said. Chickens weren’t growing to their full weight. Blame all the rain we had this summer.
It was getting cold outside and my Lola and the rest of her pen mates just weren’t growing any bigger so we decided it was time. We needed to butcher before it got any colder and my son and I did what we’ve learned to do…sharpen our knives and turn on the music while I put my big girl in charge of the littler kids and get to work, side by side doing what families have done for thousands of years.
“Mom what do you want me to do with Lola?”
He asks me quiet and tender after we’ve clasped hands and thanked the Maker of life for the gift of these lives and asked for the provision of kind hands that do their work gently and sure.
“Oh right. Lola.”
I tidy my table and give him the let’s-get-to-it look.
Lola.
We’d picked up the chicks on one of the last days of radiation. They came home with us in a feed-store box on the morning we’d had a date with laser beams.
Lola reminded me that just like my husband had that morning and every morning prior for seven straight weeks…
…sometimes we have to fight to live.
Lola reminded me that even though we’re tiny and part of a big flock…
…we can still find our way.
Lola reminded me that sometimes we just have to use the strength we were given and it’ll help us. Sometimes…
…we just have to push a little harder.
Lola reminded me that our shepherd has his seal on us and that we’re easy for Him to find. There’s no doubt…
…He knows exactly which one we are.
Lola’s red band on her scrawny little ankle reminded me that sometimes we just need a little extra attention…
…to make sure we’re growing.
So as I worked shoulder-to-shoulder with my son whose shoulders are wide now like his daddy’s, I thought of the summer and the season and the past thirteen years…growing as a Mama. Growing as a child of God.
How does the time go so fast when you still feel so small?
How do I forget how much I grow every day until one day I look at the man I’ve grown up with and realize it’s been twenty years and four children and a houseful of prayers and a faith that leads upon waters without even thinking?
I’ve moved my truck to where we are so we can hear the radio and there comes the song. It used to play in the headphones of my Walkman and as the pretty girl sings time after some time you’ll picture me I’m walking too far ahead…
I realize my boy is the age I was when we all fell in love with that song.
We’ve walked ahead some.
And like my boy, we’re growing too.
Every year, every child, every friend, every prayer…
…every tear…
…He holds them in His hand right there where our names are written in red.
Time after time.
“Mama?”
We’re about halfway through with the task and the smells from the house are of broth and winter provision and I know what he’s going to ask me.
“Let me go look at her first before I decide, son.”
We walk to the pen and he finds her, small still but as big now as the rest of the chickens with her there.
I think of our season…
…the extra years I’ve been given with my husband. The shed full of hay. The house full of children.
I think of what Lola has taught me. I think of how I’ve grown without even realizing it. How, in the scrappy fight to stay alive and keep thriving, I’ve felt the band of the one who’s marked me with His seal.
“Mom, it would be real hard to incorporate her into the layer hens. They probably wouldn’t let her in right away and she could probably die out in the cold.”
She’s not a keeper chicken. Her breed can develop fatal health problems if they’re kept past butchering age.
Lola is a meat bird bred to grow fast and then die.
To keep her would stress our farm and stress her, most likely to the point of death.
I realize all these things as I look on her little white form, -her little lesson-giving shape- and my farmer mind wins practical but can’t stop my soft side from releasing a tear and smiling thankful.
“Could you take her tag off son?”
“Okay?” His voice is quiet and his hands are bloody from the work he does so his Mama doesn’t have to, and in his blue eyes that were just baby eyes but are growing now into man eyes I see the asking. Are you sure?
“She wouldn’t survive son. She was a good chick. But it’s her time. This is what we got her for. This is her purpose. Just take her tag off. And please don’t tell me if you know it’s her when she comes through.”
He goes into the pen and I go back to our tables, hosing them off and getting ready to process the next chicken that my man-boy will gently and humanely send into eternity.
Lola had grown into her purpose.
And as I worked with my son in the chilling autumn evening, I realized that as he grows into his purpose, and my husband grows into his purpose, and you grow into your purpose…
…I’m growing into my purpose too.
A little flock of ducks flies over, their wings whooshing and their calls quiet. Their v-form heads due south and the sun slips behind the spruce trees.
We finish our work, wash up the knives, rinse down the table, and take one last look around the barnyard.
My son…the one I first held in my arms yesterday it seems…I ask him if he wouldn’t please move the truck back up to the house.
“Me?”
The surprise and excitement hit his face in a scared little smile he works hard to contain and I nod, smiling.
How long before he knows his purpose? Later that night, it dawned on me that, at twelve years old, my boy is two-thirds of the way through his trek to adulthood.
But now though, as I watch his nervous face maneuver my truck the twenty feet that must seem like a mile to him, I realize his purpose for now is the same purpose we all share…
…to keep up the fight to thrive…
…to push through the struggles…
…to rest in knowing who we belong to…
…and most of all…
…to just keep growing.
…I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received…Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession…
Ephesians 4:1, 1:13
{{Because I have a date with this handsome today…my little big superhero…thought I’d put up an old post. But it never gets old being his Mama}}
It’s November 5th and he’s still wearing his Halloween costume. One of those padded, muscly superhero get ups…America Man. That’s what he calls it. Captain America. You know the one. Not much more than a long sleeved unitard with some padding along the arms and chest. I saw one just like it at Trunk-or-Treat only it was on a full grown man with a cute little pot belly.
Evidently America Man costumes come in all sizes.
He runs to me in the mornings, usually the first of my four up to greet the day and greet his Mama. Always my high energy, free-spirited one, the fourth in a line of children that came fast and close in years. He tires me the most. And makes me melt the most too. He makes me understand why there are country songs written about being the baby of a family.
And he climbs up in my lap every morning and tells me “Good morning Mom.” And we sit like we’re doing the spider on the swings and just hug.
He needs his hair cut. I probably should give him a bath today. When was the last time he did his math work? He needs to put some clothes on. Some variation of one of those is usually the stream through my head during our morning snuggle.
Sometimes when the pressure is building all around, don’t the “shoulds” whisper so loudly you can just forget to turn them off?
Except this morning, when America Man came running it was different.
This morning, after he climbed up and settled in close, I felt his little heart beating.
Just like that, with the equivalent of a pillow on his chest, I felt the steady thump thump of his five-year-old heart, probably just the size of a small lime. Straight through all that America Man and straight through all that muscle and straight through the air between us and right onto my chest, I felt it.
The shoulds got silent and I just sat with him.
And ran my fingers through his long hair.
Breathed in his sweet and stinky little boy morning aroma.
Wondered how it is that my newborn, lastborn babe is already a math whiz kindergartner who learned that a shape with eight sides is called an octagon without Mama even teaching him.
Soaked up the peace that he’s so comfortable here he doesn’t even feel the need to put on clothes most days…or change out of his stained up superhero costume.
And that moment made me love him even more.
So we just hugged while I felt his heartbeat.
I’ve got his picture by Jeremiah 1:5 in my Bible.
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you….
When we climb up into God’s lap, doesn’t he feel our heart beat straight through all our padding and all our muscles and all our America Man?
And when my costume gets dirty and dingy and stinky and frayed…
…doesn’t He still love? Love us all the more?
When we run to Him first, when we draw our strength for the day straight from the hug of our Father, doesn’t He run His fingers through our hair and sit quiet with us and listen to our heart beat straight through our superhero costume?
Before He formed us in the womb, He knew us.
My boy will probably have another woman in his life someday. Someone else listening to the thump thump of his little heartbeat.
Only then it won’t be so little.
Only then, it will be louder and stronger and truer and hopefully it will be following the beat of his Daddy’s heart who follows the beat of his Father’s heart and then…
…straight through all the padding and all the muscles and all the America Man, she’ll be able to hear it, to feel it, right up against her chest, right up against their life together.
He turns his brown, long-haired head and puts his ear up to the other side of my chest.
“Mama I hear your heart in there.”
He’s listening.
That sound right there son, that’s the sound of my love for you.
“Ah, the smell of my son is like the smell of a field that the LORD has blessed.” ~Genesis 27:27
This week I bought my ISBNs. As my hand wavered between the “Buy 1” and “Buy 10” options, I pondered how many copies of this book am I really gonna need to print. I mean, really.
Oh, I’m sure my mama will buy a few. And then there are my friends from church. And I’ll want each of my four kids to have their own copy of course. But then after that?
I clicked the Buy 10 box.
This was my logic: The paperback version needs one and the e-version needs one. I could’ve just purchased two, but once I used three, the price difference was significant. So what pushed my hand to the 10 box was the thought that maybe someday…one day…this little sweet story may sell more than a few and I might just decide to do a hardback version up special for our family. For Mr. Ken.
And that maybe…just maybe…I might need a few more of those numbers for the next time I decide to do this crazy whole process that’s called writing a book.
I’m aiming to have Annie Spruce in print by mid-November. I’m working with printers and budgets and formats and praying…praying each step…because when God gave us this story, this dog, I know He meant for us to share it.
So that’s what I’m doing.
I hope you enjoy Chapter One of Annie Spruce, The Dog that Didn’t Die.
1 ~ BO
“When the Man waked up he said, ‘What is Wild Dog doing here?’ And the Woman said, ‘His name is not Wild Dog any more, but the First Friend, because he will be our friend for always and always and always.'” ~Rudyard Kipling
~
I told the kids to put their hands on him every single time they walked by him.
“Your hands can heal.”
“Mama are you crying?” Their big eyes searched mine.
I’d found him emaciated and barely able to hold his head up when I returned home after a weekend women’s retreat. Irritated at my husband, I asked him if he’d only remembered to feed the kids.
Irritated only until he told me Bo wouldn’t eat. Worried then.
I dug out the syringe from the first aid kit, opened up the golden goodness in the jar of chicken broth I’d been saving since a friend gave us a case of it for helping her family butcher their flock that fall.
He sniffed at the handful of nutrients I offered him, licked at it, then, after three or four syringes of water, finally found the energy to eat a cup or so of good, strengthening protein.
“Good boy Bo.”
~
It had been almost exactly nine years since I’d brought him home from work. He was a gift. A present from the officers and dispatchers on night shift. They’d held him aside, kept him from going to the pound, given him to me at morning shift-change.
When I called Matt to tell him we had a new little buddy he told me no. Give it back. We already have two dogs.
I can’t give back a birthday present!
“Yes you can.”
Fostering him wasn’t exactly keeping him, but it wasn’t giving him back so that’s what I called it when I cut my shift short and brought the pup home to get him a good meal and a long rest.
And as soon as Matt pulled in the driveway and saw me standing there with that fat yellow pup under my arm, there was never any more talk of giving him back.
Bo belonged to us.
~
If it was his parathyroid as the vet suspected, a simple surgery would fix him, most likely put him on the path to several more happy years as our family’s watch dog. Mascot. Faithful friend.
So we had blood work done and waited on the results. The lab was out of state, so we had to wait a long time. While we waited, he wasted.
Natural remedies kept him alive. I hand fed him pure coconut oil, depleted our supply of organic chicken meat, and syringed him kelp broths and as much water as I could get him to take. The kids and I researched online and checked the feed store for things that would help him hold on until we had a diagnosis.
His comfort took priority. Had there been just a smaller chance of a full recovery, we would’ve put him down, he was that weak.
But there was hope. Strong hope.
So the kids would lay down next to him on his bed, make sure his blanket was on straight and use their hands to heal. Daily calls to the vet to check on lab reports became the news of the day. No results.
We prayed for him every single night.
Hang in there Bo.
~
When we brought the first baby home, he was like a big awkward teenager. Not quite sure where to stand, what to say, how to act. So he just wagged his tail and sniffed. Stood in the corner and looked at the new thing.
By the time the third baby came there were two toddlers in the house and his big buddy died. His big buddy had been boss dog.
When his big boss was loaded up in the truck and never came home, Bo sat in the front yard for a whole afternoon looking up the driveway.
The next day he became the big boss. He had a lot of things to take care of.
When the kids went outside, Bo went outside. When the kids came in, he came in. If a moose came into the yard, he chased it off. When a car pulled in the driveway, he sniffed it out before anyone came to the door. He made sure the kids had a sidekick. He sat patiently while they saddled him and tied him to doorknob hitching posts.
When the fourth baby came home, he was an expert. It was just another thing to take care of.
~
The vet called on a Thursday night after their office had closed. They’d received a late afternoon package. The lab results confirmed yes, it was his parathyroid. Bring Bo first thing in the morning for surgery they told me.
I strapped everyone in their car seats, watched the sunrise as we crossed the bridge over the river, Bo curled up on the floor behind my seat, right beneath the dangling feet of his kids.
“What if BoBo dies Mama?” My oldest has always been my worrier.
I choke back tears and tell him no matter what happens, they have been blessed in a way that many people will never be. To have been loved by a dog so loyal, so faithful, even if we don’t get to bring this yellow dog home, even if this was the last ride in our truck that he’d ever take, our life was made more beautiful because God put this dog in it. And that was what we thought of when we left him at the vet’s office.
And I cried all the way home.
~
We picked him up the next day at lunch time. The tumor was the size of a walnut. It’d been clinging to his parathyroid, an organ the size of a grain of rice.
He was a new dog right out of the office. He felt so good we took him to the beach. I borrowed a little red hoodie from my son and put it on Bo to keep off the chill.
As soon as it was zipped up across his furry chest, Bo went splashing in the ocean. He was alive again.
~
We had a good few days with him until the morning he urinated blood. Then began the every other day calcium checks. After a disease like this, the body may not remember how to make and regulate calcium and vitamins the vet said.
Steroids, Vitamin D, antibiotics…he had his own pharmacy. I turned to the coconut oil again, and started boiling chicken, shredding kale and carrots. I fed him well.
But still he deteriorated. If he could just get over the hump. If we could just get his kidneys to kick back in gear. Each lab test showed he was at a standstill.
On a Wednesday, after two weeks of running him in for lab checks, Matt and I decided it was time. He wasn’t improving. I knew if I could keep his system strong he’d have a fighting chance. But all the system strengthening wasn’t working. He could barely hold his body up to pee. If he didn’t make a significant turn-around by Saturday, we were going to take him in and let our beloved Dr. Tabby put him to rest.
~
We never had to decide. He left us on Thursday morning. He died with his big yellow head in my lap, right here in the home he watched over and loved.
When Matt carried him outside, wrapped tenderly in one of our best sheets, we gently set his body down and let each of the children say goodbye, pet the velvet ears of the sweet animal that’d been part of every single day of their childhood. Then we put our old friend in the ground.
We wept as we prayed around his grave. With tears rolling down our chins, we filled in the hole, tamped down the earth, and thanked God for the life of our yellow dog. Then, with the sun sending sprays of light through the spruce trees, we wiped our eyes and we went inside and had pancakes.
~
Bo’s last photo on his last trip to the ocean.
{{Excerpt and photo, © Cassandra Rankin, from Annie Spruce, The Dog that Didn’t Die}}
The radiation took his cancer.
His beard too. Most of it anyways. One side smiles smooth.
It didn’t take his heart though.
Or his faith. That grew stronger.
Oh I might miss the beard some, that wooly soft rustle that loved to caress us with each of his big encompassing hugs, but the trade-off makes it a happy thing gone by … smiled at like a distant memory.
He came home last night grinning.
He ran my finger over the area.
“Feel that? It’s coming back!”
Sure enough, there it was. One side gruff, scratchy…one side soft.
Just like him.
Read {Part One} Beard, also a 100-Word challenge!
{{This post was entered in this week’s 100 Word Challenge at Velvet Verbosity, “Gruff”}}
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The laughter of my children fills the truck and there it is through the open window…
The first sniff of wood smoke.
And the leaves turn yellow round us.
The tears of my mama fill the phone and here we go…
One of her friends gone all too soon.
And the older ones are leaving us.
So Lord in Heaven, last night we sat around the big box in our book-cluttered living room and we watched the movie that says God’s not Dead and while we’ve known that for a long time now…
The reminder is good.
Because looking round can make one forget so won’t you remind us today?
Remind us not to use our pulpits to make ourselves higher but instead to lift YOU up.
Remind us to not use our words to label or make us sound like the guffawing bully noise that came from the throng of cool kids, intimidating and huddled up right there at the corner we all had to shuffle by, so we’d go fast and keep our heads down and try to escape the tease of the day, the prod, the bruise to our heart that would come when certain words bounced off the cinder block walls.
Remind us to instead use our words to lay down a lining of love on the bruised heart of everyone we meet. Remind us that they might shuffle by with their head down in fear so we may just need to move ourselves to reach them.
Remind us that your house is to be filled with words that don’t tear down but that we are to fill it with words that build, the words that are your Word.
Remind us that hate is hate and there is no room for it except to hate what you hate, and that is sin.
Remind us that while there will always be evil in the world we are not to let evil into our hearts or into our lives.
Remind us to not be like the people of so long ago, the ones who thought they had your word but they forgot the people, and because they forgot the people they turned into rule lovers and people haters.
Remind us that while we drive in our warm trucks and sit in our cozy living rooms with grape soda floats and movie stars on the big box, there are people who sit in self-made boxes or peer-made boxes or culture-made boxes with broken hearts or broken bodies or broken minds or the worst of all, broken spirits. Remind us that they might never know what a treasure they are to the people of this world and to the Maker of this world…if someone doesn’t tell them. If someone doesn’t show them.
Remind us that every action we choose can change the world. And if maybe the bad is just too big and we can’t change the world, remind us that we can at least help the world.
Remind us that you give us the tools.
Help us use all we have to help the world.
Because God, in the fall when it’s all dying…and in the spring when it’s all new…and in the winter when it’s all quiet…and in the summer when it’s full of light and fun…
…this world always needs help.
This world needs you.
This world needs you now.
And as the giggles fall on my ears, the fireweed burns red and the air smells a little like death and little like life and all at once and I’m reminded again…
I need you too.
We love you Lord God.
And we’re thankful, so thankful for what you gave us when you gave us your son and you gave us the cross.
And your grace. We cling to your grace.
We’re so thankful He’s alive.
We’re so thankful God’s not dead.
We’re so thankful for your love.
Lord God, we’re so thankful for you.
~
My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus blood and righteousness
I dare not trust the sweetest frame
But wholly trust in Jesus name.
Christ alone; Cornerstone…
Weak made strong; in the Savior’s love
Through the storm,
He is Lord,
Lord of all…
(Cornerstone, Hillsong United)
Photo credits: {Fireweed, This Crazy Little Farm} {The Good Shepherd, Greg Olsen} {The Prodigal Son, Charlie Mackesy} {Widow’s Mite, Amy Pectol} {The Sower, Unknown}
“…for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird in the mountains, and the creatures of the field are mine.” ~Psalm 50:10-11
We’ve had our little farm just three years. Not long in the grand scheme of things. But you’d be amazed what a mama can learn in three years, especially when it comes to animals. And kids of course.
An especially poignant day comes to mind when this mama found herself in the surreal situation of stuffing the way-back of the Ford Expedition full to the ceiling before sunup one morning, cages and kennels teetering while she drove through the early morning dark, her children’s faces in the rearview, solemnly brushing the lint off their white fancy shirts as they combed their hair and their coon skin caps and quietly practiced their showmanship routine.
Guinea pig shows will do that to a family. You see, this raising animals gig ain’t for the faint of heart. I said it after my kids raised the roof and cleaned house with their little pig herd, winning ribbons and prizes and honorable mentions as I just sat bewildered, shaking my head slowly. I told the judge then and I maintain it now, you just never know what road you’re gonna travel once you become a mother.
And that’s the way it is with farm life too. We’re little. We have pets on the barnyard, not dairy cows or beef cattle. Our little herd of mini horses and goats are just fun family members who fill our table talk and empty our checking account. We’re not pros, heck we have to pray for strength and fortitude before we even butcher up a few chickens. Big ranchers are tough and strong and get thrown off bulls and cut their hands on barbed wire. We’re what you’d call a much softer, fluffier version of that. Think petting zoo but not quite as cute. That’s us. With some guinea pigs and a two-toed rooster thrown into the mix.
Large scale farmers or not though, we’ve still learned a peck about life from these crazy animals. In fact, I’d venture to say I’ve learned more about life and love and how this whole operation works in the three little years we’ve had this crazy farm than I probably did in all the years before. You see, when God made animals, He gave them to us humans to take care of. And yes, some animals are with us just for companionship and keeping our feet warm at night, and that’s a wonderful thing. But there’s more to it too.
The way I figure it, as long as this big old world keeps spinning, and no matter what happens on it, there will always be animals. Always. For friendship, for work, for transportation, for eats. Where there are people, there will be animals. And as long as there are animals, there will always be a need for people who know how to care for them. So that’s what we’re doing. We’re learning how to care for animals. And in learning how to care for animals, we’re learning a whole bunch about how to care for people too. These are just a few of the tidbits we’ve garnered:
Life is messy. Farm life isn’t like what we see on TV. The farms on TV have us thinking barns clean themselves, manure evaporates, animals quietly graze on grass all their livelong days and no one ever gets sick. Or when they do, a quick visit from the vet fixes them up lickety split.
Life, real life, is messy.
And you’ll more than once find yourself standing in a pile of poop, wondering how you got there, and having no other option than to just take your shovel and get after it. But after a few times of mucking, it’ll get to become a little more familiar. It won’t be so alarming after you’ve been through it once or twice. You’ll get better at dealing with the poop. And you might even start to figure out ways to head off big messes. But it’s still going to always be there. In life, there’s poop. You just gotta learn to deal with it.
Life is unpredictable. You learn to deal with messes and may even get good at it. But then, in farming, and in life, something’ll get thrown at you that you have no idea where it came from or how to deal with it. The pony will get sick and you’ll find yourself giving him shots in the neck twice a day for two weeks straight even though you can barely calm the shaking in your hands. Or the hedgehog will develop a very sudden onset of Wobbly Hedgehog Syndrome one morning which will force you to ask your husband twelve hours later, if he wouldn’t mind just getting it over with by gently sending the poor animal to the hereafter while you and the kids run into town. Things happen that’d you’d never even think of when you woke up in the morning and the older you get, the harder it is to deal with sudden happenings, but the easier it gets too because when it comes down to it, isn’t that real life? Interruptions. Surprises. Messes. Unpredictable.
Life needs our attention. When you’ve got critters, you study them close and you study them long. You come to know what an animal needs from you. You understand more than anyone else on earth what they need for food, shelter, routine, training, affection. That animal has specific needs as an individual. You are the person that’s been commissioned to meet the needs of that critter. If I don’t study the critters on my barnyard, if I don’t know what they need, I’ll wake up one morning to a loose animal, a sick animal or a dead animal. It’s my job to give them my attention.
This life needs our attention.
Careers, worship, recreation, sports, education…all contain one common thing: people. There are people under my roof I need to study close and I need to study long. They have needs that only I can meet. I’ve been commissioned. I need to know how they learn, what their favorites are, what makes them thrive, what makes them shrivel.
Who needs your attention? Study them close and study them long. Make sure they’re warm and fed and sheltered and that they have your affection. We don’t want our people lost, or sick or spiritually dead.
Life needs our commitment. As I write, it is six degrees below zero. Yesterday it was 15 below, the day before 17 below zero. It gets dark at 4:30 p.m. This will go on for months, at least four, usually more like five, depending on our weather pattern. The animals on our barnyard don’t comprehend these details, but they have a keen understanding of when they’re too cold, when their water has frozen solid, when it’s chow time and who brings these things to them. Life isn’t a joy ride. It gets ugly, it gets messy and it gets cold. You have to do it anyway. Because you committed to it and because there are critters, and people, who need you.
Take care of the outcasts. Every herd has an outcast. That one who’s never invited in, who tends to stand off alone, sometimes by choice, but most times because they’re driven off.
My little horse is an outcast. So she eats first on our farm. Every day. She still bristles though when I want to come in close. Her first instinct is to want to run. But when I use my soft voice, and gently reach out to her, she’ll come in close and let me hug her neck. She stands still and her eyes go soft. She’ll blink, almost in puzzlement. Then she’ll sigh. She receives my love. She knows that I love her even though something in her just wants to run. Even though she feels outside of the herd, she knows she is safe with me.
I’m an outcast. Somewhere, somehow, aren’t you one too? Don’t we all sometimes feel like we don’t fit? Like we want to bristle? To run? And if you don’t, trust me, someone you know does. We’re walking and talking with folks on this planet every day who’ve been run off, who aren’t invited in, who are just plain scared of the herd. Love them. Jesus told us to. You might help heal their heart. And you’ll both have a friend forever.
Kindness usually works. When an animal is mean, it is usually because it is scared or sick. Sometimes people are mean. They are usually scared or sick too. Don’t be mean back. Kindness usually works.
It doesn’t always go the way you’d hope. Death is part of life and even though we hate it, we’ll have to say goodbye to those we love. It will almost break your heart in two to see an animal you’ve loved, tended to, syringe fed, kept hydrated, administered shots to – lying there lifeless, eyes dull, no more movement in their once-strong muscles. It will break your heart in two to see the tears rolling down your children’s chins as they look on that same animal. But it will happen. It’s part of life’s natural process and seeing death in our animals helps us appreciate life with our people all the more.
Life requires help. It might be in the form of getting the sweet neighbor boys to do some work for you, or hiring a babysitter, or someone to mop your floors, or asking your best friend to go for a walk. We aren’t an island and this life wasn’t meant to be solitary and we need people. Especially during the extra messy times. When we try to walk it alone we walk it hard and in the hardness bitter is born. We need help.
It takes two. When I carry one bucket I’m a weakling. I slosh the water all over my pant leg and into my boot and bring a half empty haul to the trough. When I carry two I am strong like a teenaged boy and deliver full buckets to the barn. It’s uneven with one. Heavy. Too much to carry. It takes two. It’s balanced with two. God wasn’t kidding us when He said it right there in Ecclesiastes 4, “two are better than one”. Friend. Family. Spouse. Neighbor. Pair up with someone. Get a buddy. Share the load. In this life, it takes two.
There’s more. So much more.
Like how I’ve learned so much about my obedience to God when I train my misfit mini horse. How some animals will listen to certain people but treat others like poo on a shoe. How maddening that is, in animal world and in people world.
How sneaky little goats make you think they’re the cutest thing in the world and then you turn your back and they cause a ruckus that raises the roof, much like the willful and exploratory two-year-old.
How a rabbit will warn all in the hutch of oncoming danger. They look out for one another and will even let kits from another nest nurse and move into their nest if need be. They instinctively take care of the helpless.
Some things are just good plain fun to watch and bring tranquility. Like a flock of chickens. Talk about boring and tranquil entertainment. And even then, there’s the blessing of eggs. Life doesn’t always have to be serious and industrious. We sometimes need a little boring entertainment. A place to sit. Something goofy to watch.
And when we do, even in the boring…
…we’ll find blessing.
All images and content © Cassandra Rankin, This Crazy Little Farm
{{{Author’s Note: Life is Messy was recently selected as the first prize winner in the Inspirational category for Writer’s Digest’s 83rd Annual writing competition and will be published in their collection of all of this year’s winners!! Exciting news here on our little farm!}}}
Favorite farm posts:
How do I almost always forget?
How is it every year, on July 20th, I almost forget the day that I woke up full of determination and nerve, packed a clean change of clothes, -steely and sure of my plans- and did something I knew I needed to do?
Something I’d been pondering for months…years even, if I’m honest with myself.
Eleven years ago today I gave my life to Jesus and I walked my thirty year-old body down the aisle at church and I told Jesus and I told my minister and I told a group of folks that loved me that today was the day I wanted to be baptized into the family of God.
And how is it that still…at almost forty one years-old and eleven years of walking with Him…how do days remain that I still need Him to remind me that He loves me and that I belong to Him?
Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. She said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.” Jesus turned and saw her. “Take heart, daughter,” he said, “your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed from that moment. (Matthew 9:20-22)
When does it happen that I’ll just automatically remember?
When does it happen that I won’t need Him to remind me?
When does it happen that I’ll quit defaulting to that lost toddler in the grocery store…scared and alone, looking frightened toward the eyes of the bigger people…the stronger people…the more important people…hoping one of them will show me the way back to the one who holds my hand daily?
When does it happen that my first knowledge, my only knowledge will be not one of insecurity, but one of sureness? A child yes…but a child strong. A child found. A child whole. A child healed.
He reminds me.
He reminds me that is who I am.
His Word reminds me over and over again that what I was then isn’t who I am now.
And every time I remember that day, that day I woke and decided it was time to quit looking…time to quit searching…time to put what I knew into action and make it what I know…
He reminds me that yes, I still belong to Him.
Why do we forget?
Is it so that, in forgetting, we remember the dark days? The days before we were found?
Is it so that in our forgetting, we’ll remember and understand the man who pleaded “I do believe; help my unbelief.”? (Mark 9:24)
Is it so that in our forgetting we’ll remember how unworthy we are…a foreigner…a stranger…a sinner still?
But doesn’t it happen always…suddenly…softly…in our forgetting, we catch that familiar and assuring glimpse of Him…that reflection…that image…that holy Word right there in red…
…and we reach to touch the hem.
And we remember all over again.
The old struggles…the sins we hate…the hurt we hide…the load we carry…the sorrows we bear…
…even in that old habit of forgetting, when we belong to Him, we remember.
We remember all we have to do is reach out to Him.
And He’ll remind us.
He’ll remind us that He healed us then and that He heals us now and that when the shoulders striped took the sin stained, He showed us how forgiveness is forever and that love is for always.
And when our worn out fingers touch the frayed and noble edge of His robe and He takes our face in hands scarred and tells us…all over again…maybe for the millionth time this time…
…aren’t we reminded, maybe even a little stronger this time?
That our faith has healed us…
That we are His daughters…
That we belong to Him.
Me, I touched His hem today.
And today…He reminded me yet again.
That yesterday…today… tomorrow…
I belong to Him.
And that always…always…
…when we are His…
…we are whole.
How deep the Father’s love for us,
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure
Credits:
How Deep the Father’s Love for Us, Lyrics written by Stuart Townend
Photos: Flowers, Show Hope, Cross Rock, copyright Cassandra Rankin, This Crazy Little Farm
Day 30 of 33:
I was horrified when he came out of his appointment this morning with a GREEN ear!
We’d been warned that this week was going to be rough on the surface of his face. Very targeted beams. Think, burning an ant with a magnifying glass kind of targeted.
But GREEN SKIN?
“What did they DO to you?” I gasped when he came out.
“A new tattoo, whaddya think?” He smiles.
I gasped again, looking closer and seeing the BULLSEYE on his face, aghast that he’d have to live with a target tattooed on the side of his head for the rest of his life.
{{Seems as though wifey overreacted a little.}}
The green is Sharpie marker, the bullseye is where they drew to get the beam targeted just right, the tattoo is the itty bitty dot inside, which may, or may not fade, but even if it doesn’t, will most likely not even be visible.
Phew.
No green ears or face tattoos today.Unless he goes ahead with the sweet idea he conjured up for our little monster loving six year-old…a big dragon coming up out of the neckline of his shirt.
{{Badass husband…only THREE left}}
Gettum honey.
We love you and your green face.
Cassandra Rankin 