She's not tellin'

Hannah just finished reading a book called The Waiting Place. I think that she liked parts of it, but this isn't a book report. It's just that the title of the book goes so well the picture of Annabelle. We are waiting, waiting, waiting...just like last year. We watched Aliyah and Annabelle late last winter with a modest amount of hope - and a large amount of ignorance and inexperience - that we were going to be blessed with some lambs come early spring. They got wider and wider, and about at the same pace - just seemed like there was more to those girls than a thick coat of wool. Of course, Barnaby, our only resident ram last time around, was still quite young and small, and we weren't certain about the likelihood of his success with the work. Turned out, we were blessed with a wonderful wool harvest but no lambs.

This past fall, Barnaby was a year older and an adult-size ram...and hopefully more capable than before. And then there was Clive (aka "Princeling"...if you watched him in his paddock with the other boys, you would understand how he earned the nickname). Clive and his half-sisters, Cora and Clara, born last spring, kept company with the older girls until breeding time. Shouldn't have been a problem. Only Clive didn't know that it shouldn't have been a problem, as we observed one trip on the driveway early in the fall. So...we might have gotten an early start on the lambing season. Might have. Which brings us to the current situation.

Annabelle is definitely and obviously a wide-body compared to Aliyah right now, which isn't to say that Aliyah and Barnaby didn't accomplish the task, but if so, definitely later than Annabelle and Clive would have. And our rather large white ewe is definitely and obviously acting a little, well, strange. The other girls run back to their little barn. Annabelle waddles far behind. She keeps to herself more than usual. And she just acts kind of weird sometimes. Ewes don't tip their hand about lambs until pretty late in the game, or so we have read and heard. Her girth and her strange ways might be telling us something. But then again, she might just have been boxing out the others around the hay and sheep-feed, and Annabelle always has been a little bit different. And we are only very slightly less ignorant and inexperienced than we were last year.

We hope that she is keeping a joyful secret, but one thing's for sure: if something is going on, she's not tellin'. Another waiting place that reminds us that we truly wait upon God for everything, don't we?