I love farming. It’s one of my passions. Ever since some accurst herdsmen and their cows strayed into my farm somewhere in the SW into which I had made huge investments and my Farm Manager fled for his life (who would blame him? Story for another day), the place had laid fallow, and I have been doing some farming experiments just for the fun and love of it. Let me tell the story of 2 fowls.

First story: so I acquired some chicken for rearing close to my house. They are local fowls, an Asiatic breed developed in the United States, called Brahma chicken. They are aesthetic birds, big, beautiful and ornamental. I never got tired of feeding them. I changed their water often, bought them multivitamins and antibiotics. Soon, the two females started laying eggs and between them, they laid up to 20. Soon, one of them started brooding (the process of sitting on and incubating the eggs). I was excited and looked forward to midwifing the chicks. Let me cut the long story short: my chicken hatched after 21 days – only one egg. Yes, 1, as in, one! Needless to say, I was furious.

Second story: I went for a transaction in a government office somewhere in the city when my eyes caught a local fowl with about 10 healthy chicks following her. After my business, I went to observe the birds. They were scavenging all over the place and having fun. I became curious. I approached the security man in the premises to ask questions about the fowl. He told me the owner is one fellow down the street who is hardly ever around to take care of them. They practically live in that premises where there is a canteen, hence they are able to nibble on left-over food with no one feeding them. For shelter, they sleep under broken-down vehicles parked within the premises.

I easily see metaphors about life from little things around me. This is one of such. It’s a metaphor about family and parenting. How come my aesthetic birds whom I fed, sheltered and dotted on, messed up their eggs but this destitute of a fowl is making such a huge success of its parenting responsibility? Sometimes it’s the same in the family space. There are homes where parents have put in their best but the children decide to go on a tangent of their own, inexplicably. Yet, there are some other kids out there who are bereft of privileges and yet, they turn out admirably well. When it comes to parenting, the ultimate is the supernatural intervention of the Creator. This is when scripture comes alive that, except the Lord builds, the labourers labour in vain. It is my recalcitrant submission that there are no hard and fast rules of parenting, there are only guides and tips. What works for one child, may fail woefully when applied on the other. When your child succeeds, it is the height of arrogance to beat your chest and take the credit. Rather, be humble in gratitude and quietly appreciate the One who gave him/her to you for this generous benevolence. Dude, you ain’t the wisest parent!

Let’s hand our children over to their Maker and it will be well with them.

#ParentingonmyMind

#InspirationalParenting