There’s much to say about the similarities between raising children and chickens. Both make a mess. Both require firm boundaries (apologies to the neighbors with the wild-bird feeder that my hens find so alluring). And both have a seemingly endless appetite and propensity to excrete smelly droppings.

Both can also be a joy to watch grow. Right? That sweet little baby you bring home from the hospital and that sweet little box of cheeping dandelion puffballs. Those first toddling steps. Those first budding wing feathers beating in flight.

Sure it’s work. Sure it’s expensive. But they add so much – even when the children squabble and complain or one of the hens turns out to be a rooster. That crows all day. Sun-up to sun-down. And chases your small children around the house, up the driveway, and through the woods like a rocket-propelled beak with spurs.

If you’re anything like me and your patience wears thin and you’re tired and wondering why you ever hatched them in the first place, you might be tempted to send them back. After all, this is harder than you imagined. And resources are running thin. And where’s the reward?

It seems that all you ever do is feed and clean up after them and fork out money. And it’s been forever without a night to yourself or a word of thanks or a single egg. And then one day there it is, nestled in the seat of the bicycle cart, stored in the shelter of your shed. Not one, but two fine brown eggs.

“Eggs! I found eggs!” Your 6-year-old races toward the house, cradling them like precious stones.

The shells are puny. Half the size they should be. But the enormous smile on his face more than makes up for it. And the rooster’s sharp talons and the overabundance of compost and the high-price of organic feed (including the bag you left in the rain) are momentarily forgotten as he slips these hard-won prizes in your hand.

It’s nearly November. The leaves are brittle brown. The nights cold. But the garden – the one you planted so late you wondered whether it would grow anything – is still producing. Tender Swiss chard and stalky kale fill your kitchen, along with the last apples from the roadside tree.

“So let’s not get tired of doing what is good,” the apostle Paul writes in Galatians 6:9 (NLV). “At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.”

This is our promise. This is our hope. No matter how long we’ve been waiting. Or how hard we’ve been working. After all, as I assured my young son, “It doesn’t matter about the size of your egg. It matters about the goodness of it.”

The day you least expect it – the day you’ve almost given up – the reward will be there. And if it seems small. Don’t worry. It’s only the beginning.

Meadow Rue Merrill writes and reflects on God’s presence in her everyday life from a little house in the big woods of Mid-coast Maine.

Her memoir, “Redeeming Ruth,” releases in May 2017. Find her at www.meadowrue.com