Fertilizer...

            

            I love my hens. They’re fun, they produce the most delicious eggs, but they’re oh, so poopy. Yeah, I said it. Chickens poop a lot. It’s not an issue during the summer when the weather’s dry, eggs are plentiful and their contented clucks are my gardening soundtrack. But during the wet, rainy fall and winter—ugh.

            All winter long, it rains. The chicken run becomes a soupy mess of poop and mud and boy, does it stink. And they don’t lay eggs in the winter. For four months, I muck around in the poopy mud, cleaning their coop and tossing them treats with no reward. I grumble all the way to the grocery store to buy eggs. I grumble when I break a store-bought egg into the frying pan with it’s anemic yolk and bland taste.

            But spring comes—it always does. When we have a string of sunny days, we mow the lawn and weed the flowerbeds and that’s when my husband says, “It’s time to dig out the chicken run.”

            We put on our grubby clothes. He digs up the stepping stones leading to the coop and I wash them off. I break up the earth with a pitchfork and he digs out about four inches of muck. It’s mostly dry by now. He throws each shovelful into the wheelbarrow and hauls it to the garden. 

            When the coop’s been dug out it looks pretty much the same. The ground level has been lowered but it’s still poopy dirt—it’s a chicken run after all. The garden is full of piles of “fertilizer”. My husband rototills it into the earth. The soil turns a rich dark brown. It’s beautiful. A month later, we plant our garden. The vegetables and flowers grow large and lush.

            Mucking out my chicken run reminds me that muck soils my life as well. Sin, trials, failure, misunderstanding and loss—the stuff stinks to high heaven. A spiritual winter sets in and paralyzes me with fear and causes me to question…Why? Why me? What good can come from this? And I wait for answers. The rains come. The trials seem to go on and on and it stinks. The sorrow aches. The only thing to do is to trust the God who allows the muck and the pain.

            After a while, when the time is right, God has a way of turning things around. The Good Gardener has put into every trial, benefit. In every disappointment, purpose. And somehow, He adds to our loss, gain. He digs out the muck. He turns over the heaviness of our hearts and draws us near to Him. 

            He opens our eyes to others going through similar muck. We care. We pray. We love. We share joy.
            Love blossoms, joy bursts forth, the roots of peace deepen, patience grows, kindness spreads, goodness rises, faithfulness blooms and self-control is strengthened. The fruit of the spirit is borne of our reaction to muck…much like my garden.