Not Your Typical Church Lady

One thing is for certain, it has been an exhausting year. I think we could all do with a little rest and relaxation. I think we're all sick and tired of hearing words like social distancing, "in these uncertain times," sheltering in place, "the new normal," "stay home-stay safe," CDC, Pennsylvania Department of Health, mitigation, and anything that involves the word "mask." Yes. I'm done with those things. Now we've added the next layer of fun to our hot fudge sundae – rioting. Oh goodie. Just to clarify, rioting and protesting are two different things. Anyways, I'm stepping away from all that for a moment and I'm taking you with me. We're having a mini mental vacation today. Trust me, we need this.

This past month we got ducklings. Fifteen of them to be exact. As my husband frequently says, "Fifteen is too many!" This makes me giggle because he's the one that ordered them. But to be fair, 15 was the minimum amount we could order at Farm Bureau. This is not our first time with ducks. We've got two 5-year-olds and a 1-year-old, and there had been others prior to them. So fifteen white Pekin ducklings arrived at our house in the middle of May. I truly enjoy ducks and I don't know why. It's just one of those things. They arrived as little yellow balls of fluff, and they all fit in a tiny box. We upgraded them to a large plastic tote with sawdust. Ducks grow really fast and it wasn't long until the large plastic tote was extremely crowded.

After outgrowing their plastic tote, they moved into a super spacious black rubber water trough. It was then that I noticed that one of the ducklings was not acting like the other ducks. When I'd give them fresh food and water, all the runt wanted to do was drink the water. It didn't seem to care at all about the food. The other ducklings were twice its size.

The weather finally got warm and sunny and we took the ducklings outside. I wondered how the little duck would do. Guess what? It turns out that the tiny duck is much more advanced in the art of "ducking" than its siblings. Who was the first to jump in the kiddie pool for a swim? Little duck. Who was the first to catch a bug and eat it? Little duck. Who can outrun the whole flock? Little duck.

You know how some women can hold babies for hours and hours and be perfectly content to do nothing else? That's how I am about watching ducks. In a perfect world I'd be a duck shepherdess. I can sit with the ducks in the yard for hours. When you tell me to clear my mind and picture the most serene and relaxing image, I picture myself sitting in the grass with ducks. So I spend a lot of time observing these ducks and what they do. I've named the little duck, Yud. The Yud is the tiniest letter in the Hebrew alphabet. It looks like a comma that's up in the air. If you want to see what one looks like, open your Bible to Psalm 119: 73. See how this Psalm is broken up into sections and all the sections have a word (Aleph, Bet, Gimel, Dalet, Heh...) as a header for that section? That's the Hebrew alphabet and those squiggles and shapes by each header are the Hebrew letters that goes with it. My Dake Annotated Reference Bible does not show these shapes, but every other Bible I have does. The spelling of each letter may differ slightly, but that's what those things are. So if you care to see a Yud (sometimes spelled Yad) you may look there to view it.

Yes, it turns out that living inside a trough was just no good for Yud, but when put outside as nature intended, Yud has more duck instincts that any of the others. Yud is still half the size of his or her brothers and sisters, but Yud is thriving.

I think that happens to us too. We get put in boxes. Some boxes are literal if we work in cubicles. Some boxes are figurative labels we've given ourselves or others have given us. These boxes don't fit us and we can't thrive. We're not doing what God meant us to do when we're smashed into these boxes. We don't have to stay in the box. God made us for better things. Just because we're awful at one thing (example: I am woefully terrible at math) doesn't mean that we can't or won't excel at something else (example: I'm much better with words.) Let's be what God made us to be and stop jamming ourselves into places we don't belong.

The ducklings are now starting to grow their big kid feathers and their voices are starting to change from a peep to an awkward quack. They've moved out of the feed trough and into the old spring house where they spend the nights. They spend the daylight hours out in the sun, eating bugs and slugs and taking turns plopping themselves into the kiddie pool. In another week or two, I'll show them where the creek is and before you know it, they won't care to come back home to see old Mom anymore. Unless they're hungry. Kids and ducks always come home for food.