The Courage of a Mother Hen

     After this last couple of years, it has been difficult to really focus on anything outside of the present. Recently things have been getting back to a more normal routine and I have noticing things again more. With all of the animals we have the house is a full-time job that has been being neglected. Three dogs, eight ducks and 38 chickens are a lot to handle. This summer though it seemed as if every hen wanted to have babies to care for! Not wanting to raise any chicks in a brooder this year I figured what's the harm in maybe letting one or two mommas have babies. One momma took it upon herself to make that decision though and that is where this story begins.

    One morning I went out to feed my birds and let them out of their coop and one of my most beautiful hens was sitting outside waiting for me. She was beautiful with a bark blue grey head with a fluffy beard and lighter lilac blue feathers on her body. I was surprised went on letting the birds out and went on inside to go to work, came home that night and shut the door on the coop with all the birds put in. The next morning was the same thing she was out sitting waiting for me. I realized she had a nest somewhere in our yard! I searched and searched for her and the nest the next few days. About 20 days passed and I couldn't find the nest. Finally, my youngest daughter found the nest way back in my horseradish plant, hard to get to and hard to see. With just a couple days left before the eggs would hatch, I didn't want to move her and the eggs and risk breaking any. I let her stay. My biggest mistake! The next day feathers strewn everywhere momma was gone and all but one of the eggs were gone. We saved that little last egg, and we had one other hen wanting to be momma. We placed the egg under her hoping it would still hatch. The next day we went out to the coop and little chirps were coming from the coop! There was a beautiful silver little chick! That adoptive momma was so proud of her little baby and clucked it around the feed and water teaching that little chick how to be a chicken. While out feeding and watering the birds I wanted to check on that little baby, so I picked it up so carefully. As I'm inspecting it momma is jumping up pecking at me biting my pants and wanting a fight, after checking on the baby I set it back down by mom. She clucks and inspects the baby making sure every little feather is still ok on her baby. I watched that momma and when the dogs would come near, she would puff up her chest and chase them pecking them on the but as they ran away. That hen, Miss Silly Sally, was going to protect that baby with all that was in her!

    A little while later we had another hen that decided it was her time to have a baby. With her sitting on eggs I wanted to make sure I marked the eggs so they wouldn't be collected to be eaten. If you have every tried to move a broody hen you know they can be vicious! Momma pecked me and bit and clucked her warnings to me to leave her eggs alone. In watching her she began to look a little sickly and pale, so I kept my eye on her. Finally, a couple days before the eggs hatched, I notice little bugs crawling on her! It broke my heart I hadn't noticed the nasty little bugs sooner! I hurried and treated her to get rid of the bugs you could tell she was feeling relief but was still very weak. Then the two little ones hatched! Momma still pretty weak but recovering strutted those little babies around the yard biting and pecking at me as I check on the babies and her. I watched those mommas and realized how brave hens really are!

    They will take on a dog with sharp teeth that can kill them in one quick bite. They will take on a person that even at only 5' 2" still towers over them just to protect their most valuable thing to them, their baby. We say chicken like it's a bad thing but watching the courage of a mother hen, they are warriors!

Silly Sally and Adopted baby Lucky

   

            

Where is the sunshine?

     I'm so happy to be back writing! I have been MIA for a while now but am trying desperately to get back into the swing of things! This year has been a year of ups and downs for so many people and my family were not excluded. This past year our basement flooded which led to a total renovation through the house! It was not expected, not convenient, and not the best time in construction to begin this project. We lost my amazing Brother in-law Kevin this last year as wel

l. Even now writing this it brings tears to my eyes. He left behind a wonderful wife and his kids. Let me just say cancer sucks! Even while he was dealing with this illness, we were able to create so many wonderful memories as a family! We lost other family this year as well cousins and grandparents. We also had family struggles this year in many different areas! To put it short this year was the worst!

    While there were so many struggles, tragedies and difficult time there was wonderful things that happened along the way. There were weddings, there were birthdays, there were holidays and there were parties! Scattered throughout all the problems and struggles we face in life there are wonderful things that show up! Sometimes they are hard to see in that moment, but you can look back and see the sunshine that that memory gave you. I look at the trips with my brother in-law and his family that we went on and the memories that were made that will never be forgotten. The laughs and smiles in that time we were able to spend together. When my grandma passed away this year it was very hard, I had planned to go see her a few weeks before she passed but my family had all gotten sick. I didn't get to see her that one last time. My heart was broken. Even though I didn't get to see her, I still have memories from over the years that I can look back on. I have the memories of her talking about planting her flowers and her working in her gardens, I have the memories of her out taking care of their chickens and game birds. Those little rays of sunshine push through. 

     In this past year I have learned as difficult as life is we have to find that sunshine! I also learned without the rain you will never appreciate the sunshine. Right now, we are still in the winter season in the world as well as in life, but spring is on its way! I can see it and I can feel it! It's still cold but the sunshine is popping out more and you can feel it on your skin! I'm ready, and I know even with whatever comes there is sunshine!

The "Whys" of This Life

     The past few months have been something for the record books! From a sick child with multiple doctor appointments, irrigation pumps going down, pool pumps failing, a house flood, loss of a very wonderful man in our family, your dish washer refuses to drain and then the pool totally blows out. You do not dare ask the question "What next?" because you don't want to know. While some of the hurdles are a mild inconvenience, others tie your gut in knots and shatter your heart to pieces. I have had a hard time trying to think of what to write, emotions have been all over the place trying to make sense of everything.

    The problem is there is no making sense of anything that happens in life, you just can't. You can be at the top of your game one minute then feel like you are floundering at the bottom of the ocean in the next. Your emotions mess with you, they wear you out, they mess with your mind and make you question your sanity. What is this? Where are these things in life coming from? What do you do? You cry, you scream, you ask God "What are you thinking? Where are you?" but sometimes it feels like those answers are no where to be found. Sometimes the answers never come in your life time. I really don't understand it, I don't like hurt, I don't like being inconvenienced, I hate not understanding why things happen. You know what it is ok. I know God understands when I don't like his answers, when I'm angry because I don't understand why a young husband/father passes away from cancer leaving his family in pieces, while my ninety nine year old grandma is tired and ready for her eternal rest, but has to keep struggling on. I can't hide it from him so I don't pretend. I will never understand and that is ok, he doesn't expect me to. There are times that I see where he has worked through the tragedies of life.

    In going through my genealogy I have seen many stories from my ancestors that I am sure they had these same emotions. I see a grandfather and grandmother of many generations back, come to this country to become missionaries. They were right within the reach of shore of the United States when a hurricane hit their ship. One by one the crew of the ship was lost to the sea, then one by one his cousins family that came with them were lost, the last of the family to disappear in the sea was him and his wife's five children. He watched helplessly as he tried to reach his children stuck on a rock just off shore as a wave washed them out to see. In a letter he wrote he said he didn't understand why God brought them here just to have his family die, and only him and his wife washed up on the shore to survive. He said while he didn't understand he could not lose his faith because he knows he would see his family again. Him and his wife wound up having more children and down through the generations they continued until the present. In seeing how the generations of faith have been passes down through that family and seeing his questions I know God understands. There have been too many generations with people that have had the same stings and hurts and questions for God to not understand.

    I write all this to say that God knows and he understands when you have all these emotions, when you want to scream, cry, question, be angry and frustrated. It doesn't faze him he knows. He is ready for it, all he wants you to know is that in all the imperfectness of this life he is there. He wants you to come to him in any situation, with all your emotions, your screams and tears because he gave us those feelings, he understands our world is far from perfect and we don't have that strength in ourselves. The most important thing is to take them to him because he will make it lighter, he wants to help us when we can't do it our self.

Finding Peace in the Poop

    This has been one of the most trying two weeks I have had in a very long time! First irrigation pumps go out, then a pool pump, my basement floods with septic water, as they are doing repairs they find asbestos, and a gas leak! While I know these are all problems that can be fixed and will be, it gets very hard to keep positive in these situations. When you know it costs money for repairs, and even if insurance is dealing with it they can almost be as big if not a bigger headache then the problem itself! Then the icing on the cake while dropping my daughter off at school my phone in my pocket gets stuck on the seat and tears my pants! I have a large hole in the seat of my pants, panties and skin exposed! I think back to the Psalms 118:24 " This is the day that the Lord hath made let us rejoice and be glad in it." I have to chuckle because all of these days are the day the Lord has made, man, has he given me some doozies all in a row! Yesterday I really felt it wearing on me, I was tired, I was grouchy, I felt as though it was two steps forward and four steps back and I wasn't getting anywhere. So here I sat in the car with a big hole in the seat of my pants thinking what am I going to do now.

    

    I went into the house I looked around at everything that needs to get done and wanted to sit down and cry. I knew I didn't have time for that I had chickens outside that needed fed and watered. I had ducklings that were demanding that they got fed, a dog crying because she wanted to go outside and run and play. I grabbed my Bluetooth speaker went outside turned on my music and got to work. I got my chickens watered and fed, picked up the trash that had blown around our backyard, started spraying the fruit trees for bugs. As I worked I forgot about everything else that has been going on around the house. I drug that hose from one side of the yard to the next. With an acre property this is a lot of work! Next I looked in my chicken coop there was one of the biggest tasks of all. Something I have been putting off and putting off because I didn't want to do it! With everything else going on it was the easiest thing to put off! Cleaning the bedding out of the coop! We do what they call the deep litter method where through the winter you stir and stack new litter on top of the dirty litter to turn the poo and straw into compost eventually. It was that time to scoop it out to add to the compost, Lord help me! I didn't want to do it I needed that push. I got the wheel barrow and my pitch fork and decided I just had to dig in whether I wanted too or not. As I dug and scooped and flipped the straw turning it taking piles of it out to the compost I began to get into a rhythm and as I worked I just felt at peace. Here I was shoveling poop from one spot to another and I was at peace. I watched my chickens pecking around, listening to their little chirpy noises and scratching at the ground. I listened to my ducks with their low quacks wandering around the yard in their little lines. Then it hit me here I am in these piles of straw and poop and I was happy. It didn't matter that I was surrounded by poop I was happy, I was at peace, I was enjoying myself poop and all. In that time I realized that even with everything going on around me there is still so much to enjoy. I can be surrounded by troubles in my life but around me there is still so much to love. Standing there in that poop I had my chickens running around not a care in the world just doing what chickens do, my ducks splashing and enjoying their pool, and a mama hen in her little crate busy waiting on her babies to finish hatching. There was peace in that poop, I am hoping this will be a lesson I will keep with me always!

 

Why Do I Crochet?

 Why Do I Crochet?

        I was a young girl sitting on my grandparents bedroom floor, looking at these beautiful blankets spread out around us. Some were quilted and some were crocheted and all of the colors were spread out around me. It was one of the most beautiful sites I had seen! I was amazed with the talent from my Great Aunt's handy work. My Aunt Marie spoke very broken English and her German accent was so thick as a little girl it was hard to understand sometimes. Seeing the work she had done with her hands seemed to help me understand her and who she was. While going through the blankets my grandma pulled out a bag that had what seemed like hundreds of slippers that had been crocheted as well and they were all sizes! My grandma said we could pick out a pair and I was so excited I got to take home a piece of this artwork and actually use it! I picked out this beautiful pair that were a very light yellow and a cream color! I thought they were beautiful! I can picture them so clearly still in my mind right down to the hand made pompom on the toe of the slippers! This was 30 years ago and I can still picture each little stitch she crafted into the slippers. That same trip to my Grandparents house my Grandma gave my Mom the little sewing kit that belonged to my Great Aunt Marie since she wasn't using it. It was a little woven basket that was a light blue and grey. Inside there was light blue satin lining the sewing box and a pin cushion on the bottom of the lid made from the same satin. I would comb through that box on a regular basis after my mom received it. I found in that box this little rolled up fabric thing. It was a dark blue with little flowers on it, with bright pink trimming and ties. As I untied it there was a little label on the flap with the initials M.D. stitched on it. I lifted the flap and when I did I saw them, the crochet hooks that my Great Aunt Marie used to make those beautiful items that I had just saw at my Grandparents. 

    Over the years those hooks stayed in the little sewing box my mom had been given. None of my family knew how to crochet so they were never in use they just sat there. They were always there in the back of my mind and when I thought of them it always brought me back to my Great Aunt Marie. I pictured the last times I had seen her. The smile she always had and the strong German accent. I had wished she would have been around long enough to teach my how to do this art that she made such amazing things with. The fact that her art not only was beautiful it wasn't just something to look at, it was an artwork you could touch and you could use that you would feel the love that she put into it. Years went on and on being a single mom for many of those years I just didn't have time to learn how to do this art. Then there are times in life that get hard. I was married, working, had my daughter, and three step kids and felt like I had nothing to myself anymore. I decided I needed to find something for me, something I had that was my own. I remember those little hooks in that sewing box and asked my mom for them. I knew what I was going to do! I was going to crochet! I had no clue what I was doing! I bought a couple magazines to teach me, I watched youtube videos and I picked up little sheets at craft stores to get as much information as I possibly could! I got a skein of yarn and away I went, mistake after mistake, after mistake until I made something that resembled something. It was nothing but I got a pattern going and that was a start! I eventually learned more terms made my own experiments and made my own projects and couldn't have been happier! I now see what my Great Aunt Marie saw in crocheting, it is creating something of your own, its making something someone can use, and it is loving the adventure in making your art. 

    Why I crochet is because this little old German lady showed me the beauty in her art! I crochet because it is an extension of myself in each little or big project! It is also something that I can constantly continue learning and improving in! I was so blessed to have known my Aunt Marie in the time she was alive and those little hooks mean the world to me! They are still in the little pouch she had sewn. While I have added and bought more hooks those little hooks will always be my favorites!

Take Life by the Horns

 

Take Life by the Horns

I am not going to pretend life is always easy! There are so many struggles in life that so many face on a day-to-day basis. While I had an amazing childhood and was so lucky, I will hopefully get into that in later posts, I still had my share of struggles in life. I cannot pretend that my life was absolutely perfect because I am human, and we all struggle in this thing called life. In life we make many choices. Some are as simple as what am I going to have for breakfast or what color of shirt should I wear today (that one is easy for me, I am usually drawn to grey for whatever reason). Some choices are not as simple as do I pay this month’s rent or buy groceries. Everything is a series of choices in life, and our choices as much as we like it or not affect everything in life including other people. Life would be so much easier if our choices were just limited to us and not those around us.

In my life I was raised in a family that has always been extremely close. Even cousins married into the family were our cousins’ blood or no they were family and still are and are loved dearly! Even though having such an amazing family I had made choices in life that caused struggles for not just myself but my family. Those choices I never would have changed though! While it did cause some unfortunate struggles in life those choices also left me with some of the biggest blessings in life! When I was nineteen, I was blessed with a beautiful daughter. Her father was no longer in the picture and I thought I had screwed up both her life and my life. I still struggle seeing the hurt in her face when she sees other girls with their dads and she never had that special relationship, but she still had so much love from all of our family and church! Through that tough situation I was able to see who my friends truly were and how family should be. My family pulled together in supporting me and my daughter with all the love and help that we needed. My church became some of the closest friends and family anyone could have asked for, for my daughter and me. Along with that even though her dad wasn’t involved in her life his family welcomed us with open arms and not only does my daughter call them her family I call them mine as well!

As bad as some choices can be and you think that they may mess up your plans they really do not. It does not mess up your plans, they may be rearranged, and things may have to come in a different order, but they are not messed up. Your life is still beautiful! Live your life, let the struggles come and fight through them lean on friends and family! Live a beautiful life with the twists and turns you did expect! Live your life to get to the end of it with the goal in mind that you wanted your life to be your story.  They are not failures just bumps in the road, or wrong turns. You may not get U-turns in life but there are always forks. You may have had one wrong turn but there is always a fork that leads back to the path you wanted.

On the other hand, someone else choice may have led to problems you struggle with and you may feel you can not reach the plans that you had and that they were taken from you. That is a lie! No one can take what you want away from you. Do not give them that power. You may have lost a loved one because of someone else poor choice, you may have been injured in some way whether it is emotionally, physically or any other way but do not give that other person the power to take from you what you wanted out of life. Live your life the way you wanted love that person you lost with all your heart. Hold tight to their memories, hold tight to the love you felt for them, and the hardest part forgive the person you felt took it away from you. You do not ever forgive and forget that is not a thing we as humans can do, we do not have that ability. You can still forgive though. Forgiving is about not dwelling on them or what they took from you and constantly thinking about them getting what they deserve. Forgiving is moving on and not letting them have that control over your life. I once heard there can be forgiveness with out reconciliation. I believe that to be true. Reconciliation means to restore friendly relations in its definition. While forgiveness just means to remit or leave a person alone and to separate yourself. Reconciliation is when the other person has acknowledged their wrong and have apologized and both parties agree to moving forward together. In forgiveness you have a choice you can forgive and reconcile separating the debt from the person and working on rebuilding a relationship or if the situation is too toxic you forgive and separate yourself from that person. If the other does not acknowledge the wrongs they have done to you that is when you need to just forgive. If they ever acknowledge the pain, they caused you and apologize it is on you to determine if you do ever want to reconcile.

Live is too short to give others that much power over your life. Through these twists and turns in life know that you are in control but that your choices affect you and so many others. Take life by the horns and hold on tight! It is one crazy ride that is very much worth it!