This Saturday night has my attention. While I am putting on the marriage conference, which is arguably one of my busier weekends, the chickens will be fluffed up to the max in one degree weather. One degree, as in barely above zero. 

What is a chicken girl to do? I put an extra layer of pine shavings, and crammed foam into the larger gaps in the shabby chic coop. I tossed a tarp over the door but golly. One degree? 

Those cuties have been cranking out eggs in white, blue and brown every day all week, unperturbed about the nippy night ahead. They had opinions about the snow that dared frost their feeding trays like cupcakes, and I poured hot water into the troughs. But it will freeze again, and we will warm, fill, repeat until next week.

Next week. The app on my phone has luxurious numbers with fours and fives in them, promising to make the white tipped branches brown again. But in the meantime, there is that glaring single digit. One. 

This week I hugged a woman whose child is not doing well. She and her family are in my prayers, and in the meantime she makes breakfast, folds laundry, revs up the car to ferry kids to and fro.  Her joy level is probably in the single digits too. 

But her family has laughed before, and cranked out teamwork like nobody's business. God willing, they will again. 

And I feel certain that God is indeed willing.