(Photo Credit to Deanna Melton)

 

Last night I really had trouble falling asleep. I have been making homemade masks for healthcare workers all week and really pushing myself. I felt so guilty for not being able to keep up with the demand. I especially hurt yesterday for a nurse that asked me to make masks for her entire nursing home wing to wear over their N95 masks for more protection and she asked me last week but I did not get them finished until yesterday which was a day after her nursing home work place had a patient that tested positive for covid-19. Now her entire work place is getting cleaned and everyone tested. It makes me sad! I have 3 children that work in the healthcare system. I am concerned for all of them.

Right before sleep last night I saw the above picture and read the post from my friend Deanna about how baby chicks without their mother will huddle under feather dusters and get fooled into thinking it is their own mother.

I woke this morning with terrible sadness and worry in my heart. I live in Tennessee and our state is rampant with the virus right now and it is predicted to get much worse in the next 2 weeks to month with April 26th being our worst time. We stand to lose lots of lives to the virus. I lay in my bed on my stomach this morning with my arms stretched upward and prayed earnestly to God as if I was a mother hen covering the ones that I love. I prayed for family in Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Alabama, Michigan, Ohio, London, Illinois and here local as well. I asked God to protect them and keep them safe just like I was hovering over them in prayer this morning and then these thoughts came to me.

In America and across the world people have been huddled under false means of protection just as these little chicks in the picture are doing. We try and depend on our money, our careers, our health, our activities, and even our social contacts to get us through each and every day. We go to our get togethers, our restaurants, our family outings and we sit and scroll Facebook or text instead of talking or interacting. We sit at home and ignore our children and stare at our phones and our children run rampant throughout the homes in search of someone to interact with.

Years ago our son Danny was in charge of making a bulletin board at church as the youth were taking turns using their own design and being in charge of this one bulletin board. Danny’s board said this:

“He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under His wings shalt thou trust: His truth shall be thy shield and buckler.  (Psalm 91:4) “

I had never read that verse before and did not even realize that it was in the Bible. From that point on I think of God as my mother hen and I as the mother hen in my family. I grew up on a farm and this analogy makes perfect sense to me.

Psalm 91 ( the whole chapter) is also called the soldier’s Psalm and I have it hanging over my husband’s recliner in the living room to remind us all of his time spent in Iraq at age 51 and how God saw him through it.

How could I have forgotten such power words!!!

I feel that after this virus finally passes us and we are free to return to our normal routines that our routines will be different. I know that mine will be. I will spend a lot more time hugging and talking to those that I love and spending time with them but most of all I will be spending time with my heavenly Father ( my mother hen) and live my life sheltered and warm in His loving arms and not under the wings of some fake sense of security.

God’s Blessings and Protection over everyone is my prayer. Just something that came to me in my bed of prayer this morning.

Anna