Rhythm of life not always easy

A few minutes into the most miraculous day of the year, my wife, Sherry, delivered a set of breech birth lamb twins.
It was Easter morning shortly after midnight. The ewe had gone into labor a few hours earlier but there was no progress. We suspected trouble. I held the ewe down and Sherry pulled out a ram lamb. A tiny ewe lamb followed.
New life.
There’s a seasonal rhythm to life that is keenly felt on the farm. No season reflects that more than spring, with green shoots bursting forth, crops and gardens being planted. It’s also the season for lambing.
But rhythm of life is far from perfect or pretty. Three days after the Easter morning birth it was clear that the ram lamb was not going to survive. We had fed him with a tube, but his serious injuries from a difficult birth prevented him from even getting up to nurse, which his sister was doing.
The lamb’s eyes were glazed and his skin was cold. He was suffering.
I gathered him up and carried him in a cardboard box away from the barn. I dug a hole in the cold, sandy earth and gently laid him down. I completed my least-favorite job as a shepherd when I pulled the trigger. No more suffering.
My commute to work that morning was somber. I reflected in the silence.
Life and death. Lots of questions and not many answers.
I thought about the emotional funeral a few days earlier in Winona, Minn., where more than 150 people showed up to say goodbye to Baby Angel, the unidentified newborn girl found in a canvas bag floating in the Mississippi River last September. We may never know how Angel got there.
I thought about Sara Hougom of La Crosse, whose life was taken by a bullet March 26. Police are still looking for the killer and why this young woman was slain.
Life and death. Lots of questions and not many answers.
I once discovered that the word sheep or shepherd is mentioned 247 times in the Bible. Sheep have been a part of our lives for some 10,000 years and were a means of living for our ancestors. It’s understandable that such an important book as the Bible would use sheep to illustrate the work of our Lord — it was language people could relate to.
Sherry and I are shepherds. The sheep respond to our voice, allow us to give them care and rely on us for their food and water. The sheep follow us.
Every day, we tend to our flock. I will never tire of watching the lambs jump around. Holding a lamb in your arms is a wonderful stress reliever.
But there’s a lot more to shepherding than romantic notions of green pastures and white, fluffy sheep. Our sheep have thick wool fleeces that are not really pretty this time of year. Bits of manure cling to their rear legs. They don’t smell very nice.
Sometimes, too, it’s hard to not focus on the manure in our imperfect world. We feel surrounded and overwhelmed at times with the stench of injustice, suffering and all that is wrong. Some days it just seems easier to put our head down and follow the flock rather than trying to be a shepherd.
Later that morning, Sherry called to say another ewe was in labor. News then arrived that we had a perfectly healthy set of twin lambs.
My heart lifted as I rejoiced with the new life. I found the energy to be a shepherd again.
There will always be more questions than answers.
But the rhythm of life continues.