Hold On For One More Day

Things looked bleak for a day-old kitten abandoned by her mother under a 70-pound haybale on the top row of a 30-foot stack. It was early morning and our family was moving hay from a stack in a field across town to our barn. One of the first bales we lifted revealed a tiny kitten with eyes still shut and an umbilical cord attached. It immediately started to squeal.  The mother was nowhere to be seen.

The picture shows my youngest daughter trying to keep it warm. When we returned to our barn, she tried to get one of our barn cats to adopt it and start nursing it. We all told her it was hopeless, but incredibly, it worked. The picture at the bottom, taken a week later, shows the kitten nursing and doing fine.

While we work, I like to play cowboy songs on a portable speaker for my hay-bucking crew. My favorite artist is Dave Stamey. His song “If The Morning Comes” started playing soon after we found the kitten. As we listened to this verse, we thought of the ordeal our courageous kitten had just endured that night and the rescue that came in the morning:  

“If the morning comes and you're not where you want to be. If you find yourself adrift on some lonesome breeze, the darkness of doubts can come to anyone, but the day’s just begun if the morning comes. 

Keep riding. That is all you can do. The day’s going to break; it always will.  When the night seems never-ending, you’ll see the glow beyond the hills.”

When you’re having one of those days, and nothing is going right, and you feel like giving up, follow the example of our miracle kitten and hold on until the morning comes because things always look better in the morning.