Tears of Regret

There’s one constant in life, and that’s change. Family, friends, work, leisure activities, maturity, spiritual growth – it doesn’t matter what it is, everything in your life is subject to change. It may be very little change, such as just growing older each day. It may be major changes like a different job, a marriage, a new baby, a death, a divorce… the list could go on and on.

We can change a lot of things in our lives, and sometimes other people or circumstances cause the changes for us. Some of the changes produce happiness. Some changes are sad. Some changes are kind of neutral; they just don’t make that much difference one way or the other.

The last few days I’ve been forcibly reminded of some of the changes in my life. Most of those changes have been due to chronic pain and fatigue. I spent the previous three days feeling the affects of “rain pain”, which means it’s difficult to do much more than the “have to” tasks. Today since I’m feeling a little better, I’ve been trying to catch up on some chores.

One of those is some paperwork I’ve been putting off. Big Brother in the form of the USDA sent an “Agriculture Census” we needed to fill out. Jess did most of it, until he got to the part asking how much wool we sheared in 2007, and how many sheep and goats we sold. I had to go back through my paperwork and figure that out.

Going through all the registrations and sales slips to get a total on sales tugged at my heart. I saw name after name on those registration papers of positively beautiful sheep. I spent years building up the genetics and wool colors in my flock. It was a labor of love.

And it’s gone.

We have a few elderly goats and ewes, but due to my health, we sold all of the breeding stock last year. There will be NO lambs frolicking in the fields this spring.

I miss it all. The beautiful sheep, their lovely wool, cute little lambs, even the work I can no longer do for lambing and shearing. It was a joy to go out and sit in the field and listen to the sheep munching grass and watch the lambs play. But the changes my health has made in my life prevent it.

I shed some tears while looking through all that paperwork this morning.
Tears of regret.