While visiting my daughter’s family “farm” in Vermont recently, I noticed they had isolated one of their hens in a chicken tractor in the middle of the yard. The poor girl jumped and paced to try to get out of her little prison, obviously highly agitated and unable to calm.
It was heartbreaking.
However, this girl was caged because she was “broody.” Instead of laying an egg and heading off to do other chicken-y things, a broody hen is fiercely devoted to hatching chicks and no good to a family who simply wants eggs to eat. She obviously didn’t understand that she needed to be separated from her other friends, to wait until her maternal instinct passed, before she could rejoin the brood.
In many ways, I’ve recently felt a bit caged myself, waiting, unable to move freely, either forward or back.
Having spent the last five or six years chasing an audacious hiking list called The Grid – New Hampshire’s 48 peaks over 4,000 feet, in every calendar month – I’m finally within reach of the finish.
The problem is, although I only have 22 more mountains to climb, they are all in the winter months. I must wait for December to come before I can begin to end what I began.
This is also the first summer in decades that I am alone in my tiny house, the youngest having moved out last August to pursue his own audacious dreams.
At times, I find myself pacing the vacant rooms, trying to escape the feelings that come with having raised my own brood to adulthood, where they need me less, and for vastly different reasons than when they were littles.
I’m trying to be content with where I am and who I am, in this season. To wait well, even though all I can think of is I want to be somewhere, to be doing something.
The other day, the youngest grand had an epic tantrum when it was time to leave the beach where we had been playing that afternoon.
She cried and kicked, not knowing that there was something equally awesome that Dada had planned next. A fire. S’mores.
She wasn’t willing to exchange a known good for the unknown ahead.
I admired her ferocity, even as I lamented her limited perspective. I suppose, however, that in many ways, I am like her.
I prayerfully protest, going boneless, when I cannot get my way, questioning God’s goodness and wondering why, O, why, is it taking so long?
Taking so long, when all I have done is to ask for His help, for friends and family, for myself, waiting for the unknown to become known.
I know my perspective is limited. That I cannot see what He sees.
Like little John John, sitting under the Resolute Desk, I must remember that Father knows far more than I do. My only job is to trust.
In the meantime, I will try to wait well. To stop the pacing.
I will sit in the known, content that whatever unknowable is ahead will be unfurled whenever and however He thinks is best.
walkwithme413 