Achy hands, and a stony heart, and a self-centered, destructive hermitage that I have never been able to escape. Early this morning, and all I can do is pray, please, bring me back home, I can’t find You.
Last night’s rain scrubbed the air and there’s no trace of winter’s stale and musty odors. The fall-planted pastures are emerald green and sparkling and I squint against the glare. I search the bare treetops with hand-shaded eyes and they are tinged in red, bud-swollen, and ready to burst open, alive again. I spot the big bird in the tallest oak, perched, very still and watching, but no other creature seems to be troubled by him, so why should I be? He can’t mean death on such a morning.
Feeding the big dogs and Bear demands his hugs. He won’t leave me be until he’s had his attention. I can’t escape him; he drags me out of myself. He’s ever so faithful and I understand completely why certain souls need companion dogs.
I lift my eyes again, and the big bird is gone. I panic slightly. My eyes run immediately to the chickens open on the pasture, but they are calm. Just gone, wherever predators go when a man invades their hunting grounds. No real love lost there, tho’ I suppose everyone needs to eat.
I hear the trilling, the call I don’t recognize, and the distant reply and I stand very still and listen. It takes a long time before I spot her. If she hadn’t moved I never would have found her, that woodpecker, way up high in the hickory, and the answering call to her love songs fills me with hope. There will be more, I know.
Clover the calf is standing in her sunbeam, warming her leather coat inside and out. Eyes half closed, dozing, working her cud, contented again after a cold, wet night.
“How do you know when it’s His voice,” they asked again last night at the dinner table, and again I describe 4 ways to be sure that Hannah Whitall Smith outlines in ‘The Christian’s Secret to A Happy Life.’ “Be very careful,” I tell them, “when someone says, ‘God told them’, or that ‘God laid on their heart.’” Mostly, that’s emotion or wishful thinking or a desire to control. “There are times when He will speak to you thru nature, or thru music or some such way, but you will know when He does.”