Rejoicing my way through Advent...sort of

Rejoicing my way through Advent is proving to be hard work but every now and then it sneaks up on me...


It has been a cold snowy week at the farm, in the twenties and teens most mornings with a biting wind that blows the snow sideways. Feeding the livestock becomes an adventure in survival. How do they do it in North Dakota for months? I layer up clothing, add a hat and gloves, shove my feet down into my warm muck boots and I’m off.
Yesterday was like any other day. I fed Ferdinand his feed and hay, let the horses and donkeys out, fed them, fed Bud the Barn Cat, mucked the stalls and hauled water down to the stable. The extreme cold has frozen the hose system at the barn so I haul water to the tank in the morning. Ferd and the donkeys and horses drink a LOT of water every day. This takes about an hour and a half. The next chore is to feed the cows.
When I got to the leaning barn (so named because it leans and is propped up with concrete block stacks), mama was there to feed barn cats. As we stood there talking, I heard some discombobulation in the barn. I turned to look expecting to see Barney in the barn. The barn floor sits up about four feet and has a small step below the door that lets us climb up into the barn with relative ease. Barney has been known to use that step to dine on cat food when no one is looking. Not so! I saw the big black rear end of Bully, our young Black Angus bull, as he munched his way through hay of his own choosing. It wasn’t a bull in the china shop but a bull in the barn!
Mama and I stood there dumbfounded at the sight of the bull in the hay barn four feet off the ground. I was laughing and cussing at the same time, a form of rejoicing I suppose. These things always happen when no men are home on the farm. Bully swivelled his head around, mouth overflowing with hay, and considered me the fool that I was as he returned to his breakfast. I left him to it as I drove on to the pasture to feed the others.
I worried he would break a leg when he descended from the barn and we would be forced to put him down. He is a big animal and it was a long way down. As I drove back to the leaning barn, frantically running ramp possibilities through my mind, I thought about calling our friend and neighbor Gary. I stood in front of the barn watching Bully with my phone in my hand. Bully saw the feed bucket on the ground, came to the door, delicately placed one front hoof on the now badly damaged step and descended with as much grace as a bull can have to the ground. He trotted down the lane to join the herd as I closed the gate behind him. Then I found the gap in the fence he had used for his exit and closed it off with a wooden pallet.
Some Advent days I feel like Bully in the barn, out of place and suspended in midair, unable to touch the anticipation of coming joy and light. I have more than I need and most of what I want yet somehow I lose sight of the river of joy that runs through my days... until I see the unexpected, hear the cry of the red tailed hawk, watch deer run up the ridge, wait on wild turkeys to cross the road marveling at their colors or laugh and cuss a bull who climbs steps to get to the best hay when he is hungry. Life is both joy and tribulation and I live dancing on the point suspended between rejoicing and remembering, my mouth full of the sweetest hay. Thanks be to God!