Today God blessed me with a beautiful gift that I have been asking to see for days. Let me step back, before I tell what that gift was, and explain a desire that I have had since I was a very young child.

Growing up, most of my memories began when my sister and I were living with our grandparents. My memories there are mostly sweet, and even with a few difficult memories thrown in here or there, God always brought about a sweetness and healing with them. By difficult, I mean things like when Grandpa fell from the ladder and the ladder went through Grandma’s forehead. I won’t get into the details, but it started out very scary and hard, but everything turned out okay with them, and while it was happening (the aftermath) the sweetness came when their neighbor Hilda took me in while they went to the hospital and she fed me tomato soup and talked with me. As a little kid, this was one of my favorite things and as I look back, she helped me not to worry too much and her caring for me was sweet and gentle. Of course the best part was when Grandma and Grandpa returned and I went back home with them.

While I was living there, I watched as Grandma would take care of animals. She would take in anything that was wounded or sick and tend to them until they were well again and return the wild ones back to where they came from. They always seemed to trust her…they knew she wouldn’t hurt them. I later learned that her reasoning came out of childhood trauma that she determined to change for good.

I always wanted the animals to trust me like they did Grandma. When I would approach a bird and it flew away, or I would come close to a wild bunny and it would hop away, it made me sad because I wanted them to know that I wouldn’t hurt them. Now of course, as an adult I understand why birds and bunnies flee at the sight of a human, but my child like mind still wants them to trust.

All this week, in the fields surrounding our homestead, I have seen deer everywhere. We have many deer tracks in our woods, but I haven’t seen any along our treeline. When we first moved here, we would see them frequently and I longed to see them more often. So I have been praying that God would bring them about and that I would get to see them. Then, this morning when I was feeding the chicks, I looked up and saw a beautiful doe staring at me. We stood there, probably 300 feet from one another for a few minutes until she bounded away, but I LOVED that sweet, beautiful answer to prayer that the little girl heart of mine asked for.