Gird Up the Loins of Your Mind

Sometimes I feel like I have a character trait really under control, and then it's like all the progress I had painstakingly eked out vanishes. For me, this week, that looked like a lot of grumbling in my mind. Cold hands and cold toes, growing boys with plenty of energy in a small space, the (now welcome) possibility that this will not be my dwelling much longer: it's been a challenge to remember to be thankful.

But the Lord sends his beautiful sunsets even so to this unfaithful daughter.

More painfully, the netting I had rescued the bucks from struck again. I had left it in the garden cart, parked right at the gate of the calves' pen, a place I had never the babies approach. A day later, after dusk fell, Phil noticed that Belle's ear tag was lying on the ground: intact. We assume she caught her ear on the netting, and, horrifically, to get herself loose, pulled the tag straight out of her ear.

Morning light revealed that, yes, her ear is now bisected, from the center to the tip, like a massive ear notch.

It's taken me days to even be able to write about this. It's like my character failing, a split second decision that it would take too much effort to untie the gate and push the heavy garden cart upslope, is now translated into a visual reminder of that failing. And, because she's a beautiful little heifer, I may face that failing every day for the next decade and a half. Who needs that kind of reminder not to be lazy?! Who needs that kind of deep grief (over Belle's pain, her panic, her disfigurement) over a bad choice?

She isn't dead. Absolutely, it could be worse.

But I think human error will always creep into my work, much though I may hate it. Unthinkingly this morning, after milking in extremely cold conditions, I set down the pail by the motor home and went to get a new box of jars. As I walked away, Chloe the dog came and began licking up the milk.

Now, Chloe was at death's door this week (I actually think that when she got part of the chicken on Monday evening, she crunched a bone that embedded itself and then, a few days later, worked itself free, but I certainly didn't do an operation to confirm that). I am happy that she is still alive and walking.

But to drink the milk I labored to acquire, cold and tired! I made the mistake. I set it down where she could easily access it, unaware that she was even outside.

Or take my glasses. No matter how often I go for an eye appointment, within a few months, my glasses give me a headache. (The eye doctor says it's because of constantly changing hormones: pregnancy, delivery, exclusive breastfeeding, non-exclusive breastfeeding.) So I wear my glasses in the car, and I usually set them there in a secure place. But this week, the secure place was not secure enough, and the lens popped out and the frame bent.

Not the end of the world. But still: three cases of Amy failure in one week feels like too much for this recovering perfectionist.

In light of that, how good to go to church and be reminded of Christ's preeminence, and to go to Bible study and be reminded of the need to "gird up the loins of the mind." To take a belt around my thoughts and squeeze in those that are good and right and keep out the bad and wrong.

In farm news: despite taking off Monday to can, and Wednesday to clean the house (it had been much too long since the carpet was clear enough to vacuum) and finish processing green tomatoes, I managed to work within 15 minutes of my standard amount of hours, and the boys and I finished a full week's worth of school. Very productive.

Since Phil is working on a major engineering project, we haven't done much around the farm the last couple of days.

We did, though, notice a spider pair that's hanging out in our house. We assume the larger abdomen is on the female, but whether she is wife or mother, we can't say.