When Life Doesn’t Go Your Way

Well, we all have days….and weeks that just don’t go as planned! As a matter of fact, it is probably all too common. Sometimes, I think it would be so much easier to NOT make any plans or to-do lists, then I wouldn’t be down because I didn’t accomplish what I had planned! LOL!

This week was a total bust, or so it seems! Chris has had the flu, and honestly tried to avoid me, but I needed some loving. So one evening, I forced him to wipe the Mentholatum off, and kiss me! Bad idea! Because two days later, I was catching what he had.

To top off being sick, and feeling horrible all week, it is kidding season for our goats. We had a little goat that was due any time, and she was so small I knew she would have problems. So I made consistent trips out to the barn to check on her….every 3-4 hours…..day and night! And it snowed, so I had to put coveralls on in the middle of the night before going out. AND….it was literally ZERO degrees!!

So Thursday morning, I felt like I had been hit by a truck! Chris let me sleep in since I had made 2 trips to the barn in the middle of the night. About 9:30 am I went out to check on Fanci (the mother-to-be), and she was in labor! It was 5 degrees outside and was the coldest day we’ve had in 13 months in Southern Illinois! Welcome to the world of raising farm animals! So for the next 30 minutes I sat and watched this poor laboring goat.

Without going into gory details, I’ll tell you that I had to help deliver the babies! She had 2 little bucks: one was a big healthy one, and the other was teeny tiny and weighed about 3 pounds! SOOOO much smaller than the other one! He was weak and couldn’t nurse. So I milked the nanny and fed him colostrum from a syringe.

I spent lots of time drying (with towels and even a blowdryer), feeding, doctoring, and watching over this little one. I checked on him every couple of hours all day long. Each time I checked, it seemed he got a little stronger. I would hold him up and let him nurse, but at first he was too weak to stand. Then that night, I went out and fed him a couple of times. By morning, he was standing and trying to walk around.

We have just a few goats, and they are all like family to us. They have names and personalities, and we love them! We cannot adopt the “survival of the fittest” attitude that some livestock farmers have. I go above and beyond to give our babies the best chance of survival that I can. So I am VERY proud to say that by the following evening, the little guy was eating on his own, even fighting off his bigger brother to get his dinner.

The point of this story is, that life sometimes doesn’t go the way we plan. We get curve balls thrown to us, and we have to adjust. Proverbs 16:9 says, “In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps.” We can plan all we want, but when life happens, we have to go with the flow.

So I apologize for not writing more this week, but I did accomplish some other things. Here is proof: