Counting the Good in a Dry Year

Cowboy Church is our Sunday column — a slower, quieter read for the day of rest. Pour a cup of coffee and sit with us a while.

Anybody who's spent time in ranch country knows what a dry year looks like. The stock tanks drop a little lower every week. The grass that should be brushing a calf's belly is barely past your boot tops. You catch yourself checking the sky out of habit, even though it's been the same hard blue for a month. And somewhere around the kitchen table, the talk turns to hay prices and how early feeding season is going to start this time.

A dry year has a way of shrinking your whole field of vision down to the one thing you don't have. Rain. That's all you can see. Every conversation circles back to it, every plan bends around it, and if you're not careful, the missing thing becomes the only thing.

What the Old-Timers Count

But here's something worth noticing about the folks who've ridden out the most dry years: they count different. Ask an old rancher how it's going in a drought and he won't pretend it's fine — but somewhere in his answer you'll hear it. "Well, the well's still good." "Cattle are holding weight better than they've got any right to." "Got one cutting of hay in before it quit on us." He's not ignoring the hard part. He's just refusing to let the hard part erase everything else that's true.

That's not denial. That's a discipline. And it turns out it's an old one.

"In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." — 1 Thessalonians 5:18 (NKJV)

Now, we want to be honest about what that verse says and what it doesn't, because it gets misused. It says give thanks in everything — not for everything. Nobody's asking you to be thankful for the drought, or the diagnosis, or the bill you can't pay, or the empty chair at the table. That would be pretending, and pretending isn't faith. What it's pointing at is something quieter: even inside a hard season, there are still true, good things worth naming — and naming them keeps the hard season from swallowing you whole.

Counting Is a Chore, Not a Feeling

Here's what we're learning, same as anybody: gratitude in a good year is a feeling. Gratitude in a dry year is a chore — something you do on purpose, whether you feel it or not, the way you feed stock in the sleet whether you feel like it or not. You don't wait for thankfulness to show up on its own. In a hard stretch it usually won't. You go out and count the good the way you'd count cattle: deliberately, one head at a time, until you know what's actually still there.

And a funny thing happens when you count. The dry year doesn't get any wetter. But you get a little bigger than it. The missing thing goes back to being one thing instead of the only thing. That's no small trick — some seasons, it's the difference between getting through and going under.

This Week

So here's the one thing we're carrying into the week ahead, and you're welcome to carry it with us: count three head of good every evening. Before supper, or on the porch, or lying in bed — name three things that are still true and still good, out loud or on paper. Make them real ones, specific ones. Not "family," but "the way the kids laughed in the truck." Not "health," but "my back held up through the whole day." If you're in a dry year of your own right now — and most of us are dry somewhere — don't skip the counting because the hard thing feels bigger. That's exactly when the counting matters most.

Wherever this Sunday finds you — in a pew, in a saddle, or on the porch with your coffee going cold — we're glad you're here. See you down the trail.

— The Sackett Ranch Family