Sometimes, You Just Have to Flip a Switch

Sometimes, You Just Have to Flip a Switch

I don’t have a good track record with coops. In Wisconsin, I locked myself in the chicken coop three or four times before I wised up and set a bucket in front of the door, so the door wouldn’t close and the sliding lock wouldn’t catch, forcing me to contort myself so I could fit through the narrow chicken run. I then clung to the rickety outside until I had enough balance to leap to the ground in a flurry of dried chicken poop.

Definitely not my most shining moment, and yet on Thursday night I escaped back to the coop.

It was a long day. The kind of long that had me fantasying about a hot bath with a lavender bath bomb and a book (I’m currently reading the Poldark series by Winston Graham; I know, very literary stuff).

So once my husband and I got our girls tucked in, and the little one started screaming because she now thinks the only place she can sleep is crosswise in our bed, I decided I preferred dumping our compost scraps to my in-laws’ chickens at 8 p.m. versus listening to my daughter fuss as she settled herself down.

I grabbed the oversized Ball jar, a flashlight, and donned my hat and coat. It was dark outside, and the recent cold spell had polished the stars. I used my flashlight to walk across the yard to the coop, and I had to smile at how much of a chicken I’d become.

Did I really think a coyote was going to dart out from the trees to see how I tasted?

I dumped the scraps over the electric fence and then entered the coop. I had to climb on a bucket to gather the eggs, since the nesting boxes are built in three tiers. I set the flat flashlight (my reading light, actually) on top of one nesting box, gathered the eggs inside it, and then moved down to the left. I thought I was really genius at this point, and then I moved my flashlight down to the second tier.

It fell with a ruckus that made the roosting hens squawk. The chicken coop flashed to dark.

I gingerly climbed down from the bucket. I am fifteen and a half weeks pregnant, and though I am not at the awkward stage, my sense of balance is already a little off. Or maybe that’s a lifelong trait.

Anyway, I clambered off the bucket and felt around on the floor of the coop for the flashlight. I found it easily, but only two of the three batteries required to turn it on. I crouched there in the darkness for about a full minute, trying to figure out how to gather the rest of the eggs without a light, when I looked up at the coop and wondered, Hm, I wonder if my father-in-law put electricity in here.

I stood and felt along the wall until I found the switch. I flipped it, and the coop flooded with artificial light, causing the hens to squawk even more since I had, once again, disturbed their beauty sleep.

I laughed, standing there in the coop with my measly little flashlight in hand, while the electrical switch was only a few feet away.

I thought, then, of how we proudly sport our measly little flashlights of hard-earned, cerebral knowledge when God’s already sent the Holy Spirit’s gentle guidance that will lead and direct us if we will just extend our hand toward Him in the darkness and flip the switch.

Does God ever give you analogies in rather . . . odd ways? 😉