You can't have just one goat. I don't mean it like the old potato chip commercial that claims you can't eat just one (not that you would eat a goat). Or that they're addictive (though that is a fact). I mean, you cannot have just one goat. You will hear nothing but a lonely (and LOUD) "Maaaaah! Maaaaah!" on constant replay, and it will break your heart (and be very annoying to listen to). Goats need a friend. Donkeys do too, which is how we came to have Dottie, our free-goat-with-purchase when we bough our mini donkey Maddy. Donkeys usually have a donkey friend, but I think Maddy believes Dottie to be a donkey, so it works out really well.
When I look out the window from my cheetah print coffee drinking chair in the mornings, I watch our baby goats, Marky (named in the car on the way home, because the blue disinfectant dye from where he had been banded - if you are not into goat lingo, that's when they castrate him via rubber band - was literally making marks all over my arm as I was holding him. Also I loved Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch in 1990), Moxie (named for the grossest Maine soda that my husband and mother both love and for the fact that it means she's sassy, which is so true), Tucker (the most romantic gift I've received in all my life - after refusing baby goats over and over, my husband pulled up to the door in his truck one day last April and asked me to help him unload some stuff. I was about to pass this job off to one of the older children, because I love child labor, when a tiny head popped up and a teeny little "Maaah!" was bleated, and then I did a very awkward-looking happy dance while shrieking. My husband knows how to rock my world. Tucker is an Oberhasli goat who thinks he's a golden doodle, knows his name and loves to give kisses) running around in their field. They're inseparable. God made them to be most happy when with friends.
I'm learning a lot of things about God here at the farmhouse. In part because the Bible seems to have millions of spiritual truths are relayed with agrarian examples, and until now I didn't have a single clue in the world what they REALLY meant. For example, God tells us that we can hide in the shadow of his wing and that he gathers us like a hen gathers her chicks. Pre-farm I pictured God's wing like a gigantic airplane-bird that left a shadow as it soared powerfully overhead. And I hadn't the foggiest about the chicken thing. I just thought chickens seemed creepy.
Last spring we had a little hen who hid another hen's eggs in a hole under our coop and sat on them. I thought Peanut, the egg stealer, had been surely taken by a fox. I think I may have cried. (Normally I cry over chicken tragedies.) Then one day Sage said, "Oh, there's Peanut!" And one evening Selden came in holding a baby chick he'd seen running for its life in the chicken yard. Eli named her Squoosh, and she lived in a brooder in the basement for a day, crying for company (you also can't have just one chicken). The thing about baby chicks is, where there's one, there are more.... So I went and put my face down to the ground and peered under the coop and couldn't see anything, because Peanut is extremely adept at hiding herself and other hens' eggs it seems. But eventually I heard a peeping, and I felt around blindly and found the next chick, Squirt. I pulled out a few eggs (one was peeping inside - isn't that amazing!?), and I took Peanut and her little brood and chirping egg and put them in a dog kennel and watched her hatch and take care of those babies.
Usually we raise our chicks in a brooder, which is gross and high maintenance and requires lots of icky poo-cleaning and water changing and so forth. But Peanut raised those babies herself, and it was super cool. We let them loose out in the yard and she cooed a sound I'd never heard her make, and those chicks scurried to her from wherever they were. They knew her voice, and they loved to hide under her wings, with just their little itty faces peeking out. When the big chickens would be nearby and looked menacingly at the babies, Peanut ran at them and then her babies scuttled over and tucked under her wings. Now when I think about God, I picture him meaning he does that, like Peanut. It's not a big industrial impersonal wing like on a fighter jet. It's the soft, cozy, cuddly wing of a mama hen who knows how to call us from danger and shield us from fear and keep us warm and safe and loved. It's tender and personal. It's cozy.
God made all of us - not just goats - to need community, to need friends. When we moved to the farmhouse, I had no idea that not only were we going to have a new home, we would have a whole precious community. We have parents who are all growing as friends with each other just as our kiddos are building friendships at school. In fact, truth be told, lots of times I plan play dates just because I want to hang out with MY friends!!! (Isn't that why we have kids? That and the child labor?)
Our church has a Sunday School class of young couples (Selden jokes that he is pushing the limit on us being in a "young" couple class) called Life Together. And our whole focus lately has been about how to really form friendships and build community and share each other's burdens and be people who really DO life together. A group of husbands, Selden and some of his good pals, have formed a non-incorporated and not publicly traded company that makes no money called "Minimal Damage Movers," who, although they resist my efforts to dress them in matching muscle shirts with logos, have become super close dude-friends as they've worked alongside each other over the years, helping to move all different people from one place to the next (while endeavoring not to damage MUCH and while taking frequent breaks - it's in the contract). We all need friends. Goats, girls, dudes. All of us. It makes the load lighter and the trip more fun.
I was reading this morning in the book of Numbers, and granted I've normally not found the Old Testament to be riveting reading, but I've also never read it chronologically (highly recommend the Chronological One Year Bible!!). So Moses has all these Israelites in the wilderness. He's gone through all this drama with Pharaoh to let his people go. The Israelites have been very high maintenance in the wilderness. And the coolest thing of all is to see how God has this desire to come down and spend time with Moses talking with him and listening to him and being not only his Leader but his Friend. The God who parted the sea and poured out plagues on the Egyptians who were oppressing His people and whose very face no person can see and even live.... This God finds imperfect Moses to be someone whose heart is humble and pleasing to him, and God wants to be Moses' friend. He's mighty and he is also tender. Don't you just love God to bits!?
So I smiled as I read this section where all the people are griping about the Manna (the food God provided daily) and they were all discontented and moody and full of complaining about eating the same old thing every single day and were not satisfied at all. And the thing that I really enjoyed was seeing Moses talk to God about this. Moses was basically hitting the wall emotionally over all these griping Israelites.
"... Moses was troubled. He asked the LORD, 'Why have you brought this trouble on your servant? What have I done to displease you so that you put the burden of all these people on me? Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth? Why do you tell me to carry them in my arms, as a nurse carries an infant, to the land you promised on oath to their ancestors?.....I cannot carry all these people by myself; the burden is too heavy for me.'" Numbers 11:10-14 NIV (italics mine)
How many times have you or I felt that way? Like we want to say, "Really God?! Seriously, I cannot even handle this! It's too heavy. It's too much for me. I just can't carry this load by myself!" Moses was considered a friend of God, and he talks to God as a friend. He's real and shares his heart and his frustrations. I think that's what God wants us to do, too. He is big enough to handle our big feelings. He knows us more intimately than anyone, and he sees how our human hearts have limits and how we can become overwhelmed by the circumstances in life and how things can get really heavy.
Jesus, in the New Testament, tells us that his "yoke is easy and his burden is light." He, God in flesh, walking here on this earth, understands our limitations and promises to help carry our load. So often he does that through friends.
God cared about Moses, and he heard his heart's cry for help. Even if the delivery was a bit dramatic (it was honest, though, and that's what God loves for us to be when we talk to him). So God told Moses to gather these certain guys together and to come to the tent of meeting. "I will come down and speak with you there, and I will take some of the power of the Spirit that is on you and put it on them. They will share the burden of the people with you so you will not have to carry it alone." Numbers 11:17 NIV (italics mine) God gave him helpers, and God personally equipped the helpers to carry the specific load Moses really wanted them to share.
It's easy to hear stories of Moses and think he's this spiritual giant who is way out of touch with all of our human frailty and weakness, and that's not true. That's not the case for any of the people we read about in God's Word. The Bible is so personal and so relevant and so for us today. God loves us in our limited emotional resources and in our limited understanding and in our fear and in our high maintenance moments. He gives us his Spirit and he also gives us friends.
Goats, donkeys, chickens, people... we are all created to be with others who will walk alongside us in the sun and also in the dark places. When it's cold in the winter, my goats curl up in a pile, so they can keep each other warm, and the chickens fluff out their feathers to trap heat, but they also squish together on their poop-covered roosting bar, and they sleep happily next to their best friends.
When I'm feeling overwhelmed, I text my girlfriends (repeatedly and with many many words and plenty of drama) or I invite myself over (thank you to all of you who love me even though I'm an inviter-of-myself) and spill my heart. Or I wake my husband up in the middle of the night to snuggle me because I'm feeling worried or afraid. Or I call my parents and have an emotional breakdown over the phone. And I also tell God about how this is all too much and I just can't handle the weight. And He reminds me that I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. And that I'm loved beyond measure. And that I'm not walking alone. He is with me, and so is my whole "flock" of girlfriends and family and husband. And that he's sent them to me to help carry the load, so it doesn't feel so heavy. He doesn't take the hard stuff away all the time. Sometimes he does. Sometimes he doesn't. But he gives us what we need to carry it, and usually that looks like the people I'm doing this life with. And sometimes I talk to the goats, too. They are amazing listeners.
I'm hoping that as I'm sitting in my cheetah chair, watching sleet falling on the farmyard this morning, that you know you are not carrying your heavy things alone either. Or if you are, that you don't have to. I'm praying that you'll feel encouraged to talk to God just like you would a friend, and that you will see the people around you who will help you bear the weight. I'm praying for you to know you're loved and that you're not alone. Life is so much more fun when you have a whole crew of friends to fluff out your feathers with and squish up next to on the poopy roosting bar of life, when things gets hard.
