You Can't Pat Ducks | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: You Can't Pat Ducks | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Taylor
10/26/21
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Missy stood out among children only because she could imitate a statue so well. In our recent visit to the park, my son Abe raced around like a banshee launching pigeons, ducks and geese into the skies before him. He and our dog Teddy were two of a kind. Not so with Missy.

Missy waddled to the edge of the pond and crouched down with her hand out. And there she froze. As Abe moved on toward the playground and the ducks returned to the pond the feathered fowl moved toward Missy like a pin to a magnet. She never budged. A mother and her five ducklings moved in close, perhaps expecting food. Park goers pulled out cell phones for pictures of the little darling charming the quacking waddlers. “Isn’t that cute,” they said.

“Aren’t you worried that she’ll get bit?” an anxious mother spoke over my shoulder as I stayed in place. “You know you can’t pat ducklings without the mothers getting nasty.”

“Just watch her,” I said.

And sure enough. The ducklings slid under her hand and she moved ever so slightly, patting them. Four of the five huddled around her fingers waiting and the mother duck circled, quacking, but doing nothing more. “She’s a duck whisperer,” I said.

Missy’s ebony ringlets dangled down her shoulders as she hovered over flowers, sucking in their scent like a butterfly. With Abe, I used the word “gentle” a hundred times a day. When he neared a baby, before he could explore the flexibility of their face, I knew I had to remind him with “gentle!” When it came to flowers, before he could rip off the petals and create a rainbow shower over all of us, I had to say “gentle.”

Missy never seemed in a hurry to move past the reality in front of her. Her almond eyes drank in the wonder of a toy, a bug in motion, or even the patterns on the curtains or carpets. Abe raced over everything and passed everything. He assumed every toy was a transformer that could be pulled apart and reassembled again. The wonder was not in what it was but in what it could be.

Missy loved to cuddle up and listen to the stories of Jesus with the children, his healing and his feeding the five thousand. Abe loved the stories about David and Goliath, Samson ripping apart lions, and Joshua trumpeting down the walls of Jericho.

My friend once told me that gentleness is an inner strength that moves us forward in the hard times. It’s the steel in our soul when our back and our body want to break with the pressure around us. It’s the harvest fruit from stormy seasons and fertile soil.

I’ve been in a wheelchair sixteen months since the accident that took away my legs but these two children now form my world as I emerge from the storm. Missy is the epitome of gentle and Abe focuses me on the importance of gentle as I see what could happen without it.

Before these two, I waddled in and out of rage, self-pity and emotional paralysis. I grew up in a home that was anything but gentle. The bruises, inside and out, left me wounded in ways that I believed no love could cure. I needed a ‘duck whisperer’ to call me close and to rebuild my hope, trust, and peace.

I didn’t grow up with stories about Jesus and the children or about David and Goliath. When I encountered my first stories about grace it seemed like an unattainable fantasy. When I cuddled into the church, ready to run at a moment’s notice, I was mesmerized. When love blossomed, and I married, the healing provided a protective scar around my heart. Abe and Missy arrived and I flew like a butterfly toward joy.

But then, the accident took my beloved and my legs. I was left alone with two, questioning whether divine gentleness was an illusion. Without legs, I moved on their level. Without legs, I had to be still and others moved toward me.

And so, Missy reminds me to be still and to know that he is a gentle God. Ready to sit with me in my loss and ready to move with me through my valley of shadows where I no longer have to fear evil -because he is with me. When my soul moves to fear I say, be still and pat the ducks.

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