Ninety Steps To The Trough

Wendell feeds at half past five, which is not a rule anybody gave him and is closer to a load bearing wall than a habit. Half past five, gate, lane, trough, back. The heifers know the hour better than he does and they are already lined along the fence when he comes out with the light still blue over the tree line.

It is ninety two steps from the gate to the trough. He knows this because one January he counted, and then he counted again on the way back to see if it came out the same, and it did.

He has never told anybody. Not his wife, not the man who helps him on Saturdays, nobody. Out loud it would sound like something is wrong with him, and out loud is where a thing like that gets its teeth. So he keeps it where he keeps it.

There is a water hydrant at forty six, which is the reason forty six matters. If the morning is a good one he goes straight through and does not touch it. If the morning is not, he stops at the hydrant and puts his hand on top of it and looks out at the fence line for as long as it takes, and from a distance a man leaning on a hydrant looking at his own fence is just a man looking at his own fence.

Then the second forty six. Then the trough, and the water running, and the sound of the heifers pushing in, and the smell of it. Then ninety two back.

He does this every day of his life and he has never once said it out loud, and the not saying it costs him more than the walking does.

That is you, maybe, with your own counted distance. Your own hydrant at the halfway mark. Your own arithmetic that nobody in your house has any idea you are running before breakfast.

The arithmetic nobody knows about

I want to say the true thing about that counting, and the true thing is not what a man fears it is.

That arithmetic is not weakness and it is not self pity and it is not a small faith. It is competence. It is a man doing accurate engineering on a real load with a real distance and a real hour of the morning, and getting it right, every day, on his own, without being told and without applause. If he were doing that arithmetic on somebody else's behalf we would call it stewardship and put him on a committee for it.

The shame is not attached to the counting. The shame got attached later, by somebody, somewhere, who suggested that a person still carrying something after this long must have missed a step. That is a lie and I want it named out loud so it stops working in the dark. Nobody here failed to have enough faith. That sentence is not in the book, it is not true, and it has done more damage at more farm gates than most things people say to the sick.

And this is not a small emergency either. It is not a big one waiting to be taken seriously and it is not a slow one that people have gotten tired of. It is a life, being lived, at half past five, by a man who shows up. That is a different category of thing altogether and it deserves the dignity of being called what it is.

Now hear where the shepherd stands in this.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.Psalm 23:2

This is yours: a shepherd who picks the ground and sets the pace, and it was yours on every morning the count ran long. Psalm 23:2 puts the shepherd in charge of the pace and the ground, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that line land on a gravel lane at first light instead of staying up on a wall in somebody's hallway.

Green pastures, and what that verse is not for

I am not going to use that psalm to talk you into settling. It gets used that way and it should not be.

Look at what the sheep is doing. It is lying down. A sheep does not lie down because it gave up. A sheep lies down when it is fed and watered and there is nothing in the field that scares it, and every shepherd who ever worked a flock will tell you the same thing: a lying down sheep is a report on the shepherd, not a report on the sheep. That is provision in the picture. It is not resignation.

So acceptance is not what I am selling you here. Acceptance is not the goal of this page, and refusing to accept is not a failure on your part either. Both of those get preached at people in your position and both of them are somebody else's business being conducted in your field.

Here is what I will say plainly, both halves in one breath, because the name over this page says one of them loudly and honesty requires the other. God heals. He heals bodies, He does it still, He does it through the people caring for you and He does it apart from them. And I will not promise you an outcome, because that is His to decide and it was never mine to hand out, and a page that promises you a specific result is handing you something God did not say. Keep your appointments. Keep taking what has been given you to take. The Shepherd of Psalm 23 is not in a competition with anybody who is helping you carry this.

You have a shepherd who leads and does not drive, and you were never handed a pace you are failing to keep. It stands written that He leads beside still waters, and the same Spirit who moved David to write it is the one keeping a man company between the gate and the hydrant.

And one thing before we go on, because it matters more than the rest of the page. If the arithmetic has taken you somewhere darker than tired, if there are mornings when you have thought the place would run easier without you in it, tell one human being today and not tomorrow. In the United States, call or text 988. Anywhere else, your local crisis line, and one person who can sit with you tonight. A page is not enough for that and it was never built to be. You deserve somebody standing at the hydrant with you.