We’ve started a new bible study at my church, just us ladies. It’s about being a Godly woman and doing Godly, womanly things. It’s a good study and I’m enjoying it.
My life is different than most women I know. I have other female friends that have chicken houses, but their husbands stay home with them and they work together for the most part. In our world, I stay home and Clint goes to work and unless I’ve got a problem I rarely want him out there. He has so much to do and is so busy, I feel it a burden to ask him to do much in the chicken houses. That being said, sometimes there are things I CANNOT do physically or are out of my comfort zone to fix. I can’t fix vent door cables. I know HOW to fix them, but physically I’m not strong enough. I’m good at trouble shooting and often can call Clint and tell him exactly what’s wrong and even what parts he may need to pick up.
Sometimes my days blur between being a girly girl and being a tomboy. Saturday morning, I got up and worked out. Clint was gone hunting and I don’t have chickens right now. So, I made a big pot of homemade cream of tomato soup, homemade potato soup, and homemade pimento cheese. I cooked and I cooked. Then I cleaned and I cleaned. I painted old furniture and then distressed it to look old and beat up. I love things that look old and beat up. I like to tell Clint that’s why I love him and he just laughs.
Clint came home with a buck he had shot and I took my camera out there and snapped a few proud pictures. Aaron was there, a young man who came home with Trevor one day after school several years ago and just seemed to never completely leave. Clint and I feel like he is a stepson at this point. He comes for Sunday dinner pretty regularly and calls Clint to ask for advice or chat. Clint went into the shop and Aaron grabbed all four legs of the buck and heaved it out of the bed of the pickup. Aaron is a big, strong guy but the buck’s head just wouldn’t clear the tail gate so, I grabbed the antlers and helped Aaron carry it into the shop. I watched as Clint cut behind the tendons just above the back hooves and ran a hook thru them. They hoisted the buck into the air with the chain lift. Clint placed a piece of wood about a foot and a half across with wedges cut out of it between the buck’s back legs to hold them apart. It had already been gutted. He grabbed the hose and began washing the blood and grass and hair that had stuck to the inner part of the deer. The water and blood ran into the drain in the floor of the shop. The dogs sniffed and snuffed the air. I watched as he cut around the white tail of the deer and started to skin it. I’ve helped to skin many deer, but Aaron was there so I left it to him. “When y’all are done, I’ve got soup and pimento cheese and pound cake.”
Clint smiled at me, his camo splatted here and there with blood. “you’re a good woman. She’s a good woman, huh, Aaron? She’s a good cook, too.” Aaron smiled and agreed and said “I know.” I grinned at them and said “y’all just holler when you’re ready to eat.” and I headed inside the house.
I washed the blood off my hands and set about to painting again and cleaning. After finishing up with the deer, Clint came in and ate and said he was going to take a nap. We’d both been fighting allergies/colds all week. I rarely nap. I actually dislike naps and always have. But I found the nap idea intriguing for some reason, so I lay down on the bed beside him and fell asleep almost immediately.
I woke an hour later, confused and stupid. This is why I hate naps. I wake up confused and stupid every time and it doesn’t wear off for an hour.
I got up quietly and slipped out, Clint’s snore a steady sound. I puttered around the house til he got up.
We sat quietly and visited until his phone vibrated. He answered it and had a short conversation.
He stood up and said “well, that was Greg, he and his wife saw a deer limping across the pasture. Said it was limping pretty bad. It may have been shot or hit by a car. Either way, it’s limping and hurt. Wanna go with me and see if it needs put down?”
I got up and changed shoes. Clint dressed me in an orange vest and frowned at my pale pink ball cap and pulled it off and put on a hunter’s orange one. “I don’t look good in orange” I jokingly protested. “I’m a winter.” He sighed like he always does and we climbed into the truck.
We headed down the road, just across from our old house. The house we lived in when we first married and brought the babies home to. I always look at it if I drive by. It’s so full of memories of early years. I half expect to see Trevor or Tara, ages 6 and 4, playing on the carport. They are never there except in my mind.
We parked and got out and headed into the pasture. Clint got his rifle out in case he had to put the deer down. Many round bales of hay dotted here and there. We whispered to each other quietly about where this deer might be. I said “if I were a deer, and I was hurt, I’d get in the shade, and hide under a tree.” Clint said “yup.” I said “don’t deer head for water when they’re hurt?” “yup.” said Clint. “ooh, I bet it’s down there, there’s a creek and it’d be cool and a good hiding place!” I said excitedly. Clint said “yup.” then he added “ Shhhhh. Don’t talk. Walk quieter.”
We walked along side by side and I said “this is a nice evening for a walk!” Clint agreed. I reached to take his hand, as if we were on a lover’s lane or walking in a store. He said “sweetie, I gotta have my hands free in case I have to shoot.”
I sighed. I forgot we weren’t just walking and I have trouble being quiet. I tried. I saw in the distance the trees, the inside of the woods dark and cool, inviting. I started walked toward it, sure that’s where a hurt deer would go.
“would you slow DOWN??” Clint said. “you walk too fast. You have to slip around.” I sighed again. I cannot slip around. But I tried.
Finally we got to where we thought the deer might be and I slowed, looking carefully into the brush. Clint walked on ahead about 30 feet and did the same, slowly peering and peeking. I took a step into the beginning of the brush, feeling sure the deer was near me. Clint got my attention and said in a whisper “if it’s wounded, it might try to hurt you if you get too close. Be careful!” I nodded and took another step. I could see the creek. I could see the slope of the bank, the large dead trees lying here and there, pushed by past flood waters. It was beautiful. If I were an injured deer, this is where I’d rest, in the shade, near the cool water.
I heard the deer before I saw it, just 15 or 20 feet in front of me. It was a small doe. She scrambled to her feet and turned away from me and then she just LEAPT over the barb wire fence behind the creek. She seemed to hang in the air for a moment, her tail a white flag, her feet elegantly tucked up, her tiny hooves black and shiny. Her eyes were dark, and big, and full of fear. Her ears, one angled toward me to listen, to see if I would follow. Her fur, smooth and brown and beautiful. She leapt over the fence, out of the shade and into the sun.
And then she was gone.
Clint tried to track her for a while, but she was nowhere to be found. “I knew that’s where she was! I had a feeling!” I said.
“you and your feelings!” he smiled at me. He shook his head. “Well….I was RIGHT.” I smiled back. “you were.” he said.
We headed back to the truck, the long walk across the pasture in our orange vests and hats. I was hot and sweaty and so was he. This time when I took his hand, he didn’t scold me and we walked hand in hand toward the truck.
People drove by on the highway near the pasture and I thought how strange we must look, these hunters holding hands, dressed in orange vests and hats.
We drove home and I thought about that doe, leaping like that. Even though she was hurt. She summoned enough strength and ignored her pain enough to save her life, to keep from being put down.
I told Clint she didn’t look like she was hurt that bad. He said she’d probably be alright if she could jump like that.
I thought about being a Godly woman. How my life, the girly girl part and the tomboy part, blurs and crosses back and forth. One minute I’m making soup. The next minute, I’m hoisting a dead buck by the antlers. One minute, I’m dressed for church. The next minute, I’m running barefoot thru a flood, fully made up for church, having kicked my shoes off so not to ruin them, in the chicken houses trying to find where the water is coming from. One minute, I’m driving my pastor’s wife (Susie, who made brownies and has them carefully covered in Saran Wrap on a plate and holds them in her lap) to a bible study. The next minute, I’m pulling into the church parking lot and leaping from the car, screaming STOP IT, STOP HITTING THAT GIRL, NOT IN MY CHURCH PARKING LOT OR YOU’LL HAVE TO FIGHT ME TOO SO HELP ME GOD at a young man who is shoving his girlfriend around, chest bumping her, raising his forearm to knock her in the side of the head. (Susie never even drops the brownies, so stunned is she.)
God made us both, He made male and female. We are both made in His image. Clint is tough and manly, but he is tender and sweet with babies and small children and me. I am soft and curvy, but do a man’s job in the chicken houses. Clint zigs where I zag and I rise when he falls and he lifts when I feel put down.
I thought about that doe, elegant and tiny footed, her lean, beautiful face as she leapt into the sunlight, regardless of her pain.
I want to be like that.
Tender, but tough.
Delicate, but durable.
Injured, yet inspiring.
“As the deer panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee, oh God.” Psalm 42:1
Oh dear (deer?) reader. Injured you may be, seek the cool of the shade by the brook. His living water is there, to quench your panting soul.
And never, ever let the world put you down.
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