new life on the farm

Yesterday

I found myself singing Stand in the Rain.

kinda loud

for me, anyways - I rarely belt 'em out.

~

Valentine's Day, last year

we were driving to church for our teen outreach;

I sang the song then, too

only that time

I sang with tears in my eyes

and a huge lump in my throat;

Billy, Tony's little Boer buck

had just died.

I was really wondering if we'd made a mistake

moving here;

had we misunderstood God's will for us?

we'd been so sure at the time,

but

everything was so hard!

Much harder than we'd anticipated.

And

pretty much

nothing

was successful.

Our garden had been a flop

neighbor's dogs kept killing our chickens

the house was continuing to fall apart

(how was this even possible??!)

and then,

that song came on the radio

and I knew

we had not misunderstood.

everything was crashing down

but we needed to stand firm.

~

I was fixing a quick dinner

when Tony ran in the house.

He was shaking.

"there's a baby goat out there!"

he barely got the words out

before I took off running,

shouting

"Praise the Lord"

on my way out the door.

We had just about given up hope.

Queenie died not long ago;

we were expecting kids just any time -

then, she got real weak.

Tony researched possible causes,

was tending to her all throughout the day

and she seemed to be doing much better

he ran out to check on her first thing next morning

expecting babies

and found her lifeless body instead.

we weren't positive if Speckles was even pregnant.

She was :-)

There is new life on our farm!

Hopefully, the first of many new lives

(yes, we had those 2 baby chicks but the dogs killed them, too...)

we are standing firm

there's been lots more rain than we would have liked

but

we haven't drowned

~

Thank you, Lord

for new life!