Pied Piper Mom Leaves Cares Behind

 When I go out to gather eggs and take our table scraps to the chickens each afternoon, I feel like Pied Piper.

As you can see, about four o'clock in the afternoon, goats and chickens alike seem to know that the mom of the place is about to bring out treats (i.e. table scraps) and, if the water pan is empty, will replenish the water.

I clink through the gate and hang the chain back on it...

...before starting across the bridge. I keep a wary alertness regarding Bell, the white horned goat, who has been known to rear up on her hind legs right in the middle of the bridge, the highest part above the gully below, and challenge me for some reason. 

So I keep very wary of her as I make my way across--if Heidi, the brown goat, will get her head out of the garbage pail and get out of my way. 

Some days it's all I can do to drag myself outside to go to the barn by that time of afternoon, but I still do it. I talk to the chickens and find their gift of eggs in the nests. 

And in a way, for a few brief moments, I leave my cares behind as I go out in the sunshine and fresh air, sensing that I am needed by our animals--and that they are very happy for my presence and gift of table scraps for them. 

On a day like today, I must go out in the very wet mud under drizzling clouds, but I am thankful for the rain and for a chance to leave my cares inside the house--including the new care after Jonathan sent me his MRI results--not the news we were hoping for.

But we don't need to cross bridges until we come to them, as the saying goes. And so we take one step at a time, and one day at a time. Tests and maybe a biopsy will be in his future, I suppose, and so he joins my crowd at the medical centers in Rapid City. 

Not what we had hoped for.

But I am grateful to just be making homemade laundry soap and homemade goat cheese, doing laundry and packaging books instead of sitting in a hospital today.

Almost three weeks post chemo, I have much to be thankful for, including a very good night's sleep for both of us and memories of a very fulfilling Lord's Day yesterday (more on that in another post, I hope). 

I clasp my Bible close and read Psalm 86 as my prayer for the day, put my trust in the Lord,

and head outdoors into the mud to gather eggs--and maybe cut some fresh rhubarb.

By God's grace, Pied Piper Mom can continue to live with a praise in her heart to the Lord.