It was getting late and it was raining.
I knew I should walk down and close the door.
I made a justification: it was raining and nothing had happened before when the door was left open.
I wake up.
I go check.
There are feathers scattered around, including baby ones and the fence is down.
The chickens were attacked and three are gone, including a baby chick.
I know, these are just chickens. But it is my fault, I didn’t go down and close the door.
These baby chicks have had more meaning than just chicks.
A friend shared that because we have a rooster, all the eggs we get are fertile. It is just a matter of when a hen decides to sit on some of the eggs that they grow, hatch and become baby chicks. One of the hens chose…these were the eggs she was going to sit on.
There were three.
Weeks went by and nothing happened. We began to think the eggs were rotten and the allotted time had gone by. We were giving mama hen one more week.
One egg hatched. Three days later another hatched.
The third never made it and disappeared.
There were two.
We watched them grow like weeds and new meaning came from the Lord hiding us under his wing as I watched one chick hide under its mother’s wing with only its head peeking out.
I watched them. I watched mama hen be a mama bear towards the other hens. I watched mama hen find crickets for her babies and rip up food for her babies.
Last night, I didn’t close the door.
Now there is only one.
I feel like this is our dreams. The same friend as above shared that sometimes we have choices in our dreams…which ones do we want to sit on? Which ones do we want to invest our time, energy, care and love into? Sometimes the Lord gives us a choice to choose which dreams we want to sit on.
Sometimes part of that dream never comes about, it never hatches.
Sometimes you forget to close the door and part of that dream dies.
But one part might live, one part might make it and it needs to be nurtured, cared for and protected. And then we can watch it grow up and become what the Lord meant it to be.
Here’s to hoping, dreaming, grieving and allowing God to hide us under His wing, just like a mama hen.
