God Giveth Life, and God Taketh Away by Alexandra

God Giveth Life, and God Taketh Away by Alexandra - April 2016 Scholarship Essay

If I have learned anything from English class it is that a Bildungsroman is a coming of age story. This is not a Bildungsroman. I am not Jane Eyre or Huckleberry Finn. But I have learned a valuable lesson that I will go on to remember for years. “God giveth life and God taketh away.”

I still remember the sweet, pungent stench that burned my nose with every inhale. The winter air bit my face the moment I stepped out of the car. I rushed over to the barn to see the calves. None yet. My mother and I had come up north to the farm near my cabin for the weekend to help my grandpa with the cows for calving season. I was 14, had never seen a calf born before, and could not contain my excitement.

We took the four-wheelers up the hill to the pasture to run a fence check for calving mothers. At the top of the hill in the back corner was a mother with hooves “hanging out the back.” I watched her give birth and thought about the cliché “miracle of birth” line but it was true, life is truly a miracle. We stayed a little longer to watch the calf takes its first steps and then we drove back to the cabin.

The next day we were up at the crack of dawn. When we got to the farm I knew something was wrong. The farm hand was up in the pasture with a four-wheeler and medical equipment. We went up to help and there was a calf on the ground, not moving. It was alive but extremely sick. I held the calf on the back of the four-wheeler while my mother drove. I remember how soft the fur was, how small and weak the calf was. It didn’t even try to move when we brought it inside the barn.

I watched, cringing, as my grandfather shoved a feeding tube down the calf’s throat. He hooked it up to a protein mixture and began to feed the calf, telling me, “Watch, it’ll perk her right up.” All of a sudden, the mixture started to seep out of her nose, and before I knew it, we were holding her upside down draining the liquid from her lungs. We tried to drain the liquid, but it was too late; the feeding tube had drowned her. As I walked out of the barn, stunned and in shock at what I had just seen, I heard my mother say quietly, “God giveth life and God taketh away.”

This quote has stayed with me to this very day. It doesn’t make death any easier, but it gives me strength to know that God is doing everything with a purpose. These words walked me through the death of my baby cousin, my softball coach, my best friend’s grandfather and many more. I have learned to live life to the fullest and to savor every little moment because in an instant, it could all be gone. That simple little line is a constant reminder that the same God that has given us life can just as easily take it away. I would like younger students to live their life to the fullest, but also remember who gave it to them. Younger students should know going through life to take chances and be brave because one day, everything could be gone.

Two years later, my mother, cousins, and I came back up to the farm to help with calving season again. The familiar sweet, pungent smell welcomed me and the cold was just another factor of the farm. One morning we were greeted with a mother in the process of giving birth. I smiled at the newborn calf and watched it with affection when I was interrupted to check on a mother that was calling for her calf down by the creek. The moment I heard her cries I knew something was wrong, and as I got closer I saw the familiar fur of a calf lying in the cold, muddy water. We waited for the mother to leave and I lifted the dead calf out of the creek. I carried the limp, cold body to the four-wheeler as I heard the bone-chilling calls of a mother without her child. While walking back to the barn my mother’s words rang in my ears, “God giveth life and God taketh away.”