Past Troubles and Future Hope

Job 11:12-18 says,"An empty man can gain understanding, even if he was born like a wild donkey. If you will set your heart right, if you will spread out your hands toward him, and not let unrighteousness remain in your tents, then when you lift up your face, there will be no defect; you will be firm and free from fear. For you will forget your misery; you'll remember it like a flood that passed through long ago; your life will be brighter than noon; even its darkness will be like morning. You will be confident, because there is hope; you will look around you and lie down secure."

The summer of 2008, we bought the home we're living in now. We moved all of our livestock from our home in Huntsburg to our new home here in Rome. We were settling in and loving it. Within a few weeks of purchasing our home, I also purchased 3 boer doe goats from a local Amish man. They were beautiful and looked very healthy. However, they were simply immune to the diseases they carried. In my disorder over having just moved, I didn't quarantine my animals.

About a month or so after bringing them home, my best milking goat became weak and anemic. She promptly died. Then my Alpine buck began scouring (diarrhea), so I took in a stool sample to a local veterinarian. A day later, he called and told me what I didn't want to hear: parasites. My herd was now infected with haemonchus contortus(or the barber pole worm). This nasty parasite matures rapidly and sucks blood from the inside of the animal resulting in anemia and rapid death. It also can lie dormant for MONTHS with no host!

That summer, I buried many animals. This parasite claimed the life or at least severely impaired more than half of my herd. Day after day, my husband and I worked into the night ministering fluids and wormers to our sick goats (amazingly, not one sheep became ill during this time, though!). Our farm began to look more like those old films depicting a town infected by a plague. What goats were healthy enough to be out on pasture again were still thin and frail. Some would wander out of the barn for a bite of grass just to collapse in death with that bite of grass yet unchewed in their mouth. I cried out to God many times to kill this parasite that was killing my herd I had put so much time and money and effort into. My prayers seemed to fall on deaf ears. Our pasture developed two sizeable burial mounds that readily accepted a new carcass every couple of days. We buried from July until the end of October.

Winter came with a vengeance that year. It was snowing and freezing very early. It was brutally cold and we had a constant battle with ice and freezing pipes. The pipes even became disjointed under our house and we were without any running water for weeks. I 'bathed' over the kitchen sink using melted snow in a kettle from the stove. Winter didn't end until the middle of April. Praise God for it! Do you know what that winter was? It was an answer to prayer! That winter was so cold that it killed off the parasites! If it had been mild, they might have lived. I have lost NOT ONE animal to parasites since the summer of 2008.

As in the passage from Job I posted at the beginning, I have become like an empty person with no understanding. Until I humble myself and make myself nothing, God will have a hard time filling me up with the things He wants to make in me. I have read all the farming books out there. I own many veterinary books on livestock. I've studied homesteading, legal raw milk distribution, tax breaks, you name it. Do you know what all of that is in the face of God? Chaff. Knowledge is chaff until you are an empty vessel waiting to be filled by God. No matter how self-important you are, no matter how rebellious, God can bring you to your knees if you let him. He is a good master. From that agonizing summer, I learned to not put too much energy into the farm. I learned that it's HIS farm anyway, and I'm just the steward. There is a verse in the gospel referencing this, in which Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd and we are simply the hired help.

All misery from our circumstances will be washed away in time. May God grant you the peace He's instilled into me through this terrible lesson. May you be open enough to receive it and trust that no matter how painful it is, IT IS GOOD! I have learned to trust God no matter what and this is a gift I wish for all. I indeed can 'look around and lie down secure' because I know who is REALLY in charge all along!