I am very tender towards losing little creatures. A rural upbringing and our homesteading have hardened me somewhat, but sometimes the losses still get to me. It is harder when it is something young. I don't cry or talk about it out loud. It just affects my inner person and I have to work through it.
When I say I would not wish anyone, not even someone who behaves as an enemy, to go through baby losses, I mean it. It is too difficult to work through and affects you for life. It changed me. I know it was a refining from God and opened the door to ministering to others, but it was a challenging time. There is peace knowing that those children went straight to Jesus and never had to experience the struggles and sorrows in this life.
Sweetheart is a cat given to us by Amanda when she moved. Amanda found the kitten abandoned, dirty, wormy, sick, and emaciated. Amanda nursed her back to health. Before Amanda moved, Sweetheart escaped the house and got pregnant.
Sweetheart is a first-time mother, so we put her in a crate in a spare room before she went into labor. The big thunderstorm that went through put her into labor. Two of her babies died right away.
Three days later, she brought the third one and laid it in my path. She immediately started meowing very desperately and loudly. She clearly wanted my help. I looked down at her lifeless baby and my heart seized. I couldn't fix it for her. I immediately started thinking about how awful it was to lose babies to miscarriage and stillbirth. My heart was struck with compassion for the poor mama cat. I didn't tell her she'd have another litter because that ignores the current loss. I just sat with her, petted her, and talked to her. She couldn't understand my words, but we communicated and understood each other.
Years ago, I stopped hatching from my incubator because the losses were too troubling to my heart. This was during the time I was losing babies. Also last week, we had an incubator malfunction driving the temperature up to 109F. The approximately 450 eggs were just a week from hatching. They were all lost. I put them on the compost pile expecting something to use them. The next day, I saw crows going back and forth with them in their beaks. They were feeding them to their young. I had losses, but their babies will benefit from their deaths.
Also last week, we had a 6' black snake devouring our young pullets. Emily and Hannah caught it in the act and killed it. It is illegal to relocate them and if left here, it will keep eradicating our birds which will feed people for years. I feel bad for the snake not only because its repeated choices for an easy meal cost it its life, but because Emily and Hannah ganged up on it. Those two girls are ferocious when it comes to protecting our livestock! That was also the first time they ended a snake without me. A milestone of farm life!
I told Clint the other day that I am sick of death and feel like my body produced enough of it for me. I said that in frustration over the incubator losses and while reeling over news from a friend.
A strong Christian friend of mine is in a slow process of dying right now. My heart is overwhelmed with the concern for her suffering, and her family, and with grief that I will soon lose her fellowship. But her death will bring her relief from the extreme suffering she is enduring. Death will also usher right to Jesus where she will know no more pain or suffering ever. It will let her see and know Jesus face to face and reunite her with loved ones. She'll see what's behind the veil.
Death is not something we consider good, but it is not always bad either. With perspective, we can find it can serve many good purposes. I am thankful to Jesus I will only have to die once and will not face eternal death. If you want that same freedom, all you have to do is believe in Jesus.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16
