Okay friends, here’s what we’re learning in the poultry world: Quail are super hardy, except when they’re not.

Except when they’re aggressive and try to kill each other.

Except when they wallow in their own grossness and ruin their feet.

Except when there’s a mysterious injury or illness you can’t identify regardless of having the entire internet at your disposal, and it’s just their time to go.

But other than that, they’re terrific and will apparently live through anything as long as you give them clean water and food…for about two years, that is, because that’s their lifespan. They live fast: They hatch fast, they start laying fast, they mature for harvest fast. And if one ever gets loose from the pen, say adios, sayonara, because they run fast, too.

Because of all this (and because they are delicious), about a month ago we were down to ten quail from the nineteen we started with. So we considered our options in light of the fact that domesticated quail rarely hatch their own chicks: We could just phase them out but we didn’t really want to, or we could buy more chicks again, but we didn’t want to do that, either.

So we thought about the one thing we never wanted to do at all (funny how that’s happening more and more these days) which was incubate eggs and hatch them ourselves. Ehh, too tricky. Too intimidating.

But prayer is dangerous because God will use it to change you as much as the world around you. And as we prayed about it, as often happens, the thing we didn’t want to do became something we did want to do. It didn’t seem as intimidating. It sounded fun, and educational, and like a great thing to add to our homeschool repertoire.

(Rep-ah-twah. Fun word.)

Around the same time we were having a spiritual awakening about using an incubator, a friend offered us his quail – only one, his last one, see all the exceptions to hardiness above. And this was fabulous because we needed an unrelated quail to breed with some of ours so we wouldn’t hatch chicks with wings sticking out of their forehead. So we gratefully took the new quail, not knowing if it was male or female. Didn’t really matter, the bloodline was different and it would freshen things up a bit.

But it did matter, sort of, because you can’t put too many males in the same hutch. And this bird looked…ambiguous. So just in case, we put it with two females.

And within a day, after close observation, we knew the new quail was definitely a male. Not only did he not lay eggs, but he did all the (ahem, cough) typical male behavior…you know, burping loudly, bragging about sports teams, and collecting miscellaneous pieces of hardware that might be useful sometime in the next three decades.

We started collecting eggs to hatch, keeping them in a designated dish. Then the incubator finally arrived, and we gave the instructions a cursory read, inserted the eggs, fiddled with the thermostat, went back to the instructions to figure out how we messed up (don’t tell me this isn’t what you do every time you figure out new equipment, also), and finally, at the right temperature, left them to do their incubatey thing.

On day fifteen, we put the eggs in lockdown. That sounds dramatic, and I guess it is though it’s nothing fancy: We removed the eggs from the turning racks (which slowly tip the eggs from side to side to help the chickies develop properly) and them put them back in the incubator. Added a little more water, misted the eggs, shut the lid again, and waited.

And waited.

I confess I stood hunched over the window of the incubator for ten minutes watching for any small movement from the eggs. Just like trying to feel a baby’s first faint kicks.

But no, it wasn’t time yet. Even when the promise is so close.

So I went back upstairs because it was my turn to be at the desk, writing. Some of you already know we take turns throughout the day, so whoever is not working is homeschooling the kids, wrestling laundry, running errands, seeking spiritual epiphanies about poultry, whatever.

I sat at the desk, opened my Bible, and all the other desires started calling: check email, check websites, check notifications, check sales. Pushed them away, pulled the Bible closer. Tried reading glasses, put them away again.

It’s not a vision problem, mostly. It’s the other kind of focus we’re always fighting – we want to live fast, too, but living right requires slowing down.

Help me to hear you in Your word, I ask Him.

This is where your encouragement comes, He answers. Not in email or anything else. This is where breakthrough comes. And we need it in so many things; I don’t remember the last time we didn’t need breakthrough. I’m trying to think back, but I don’t think there’s been a moment since we started the adoption process in 2010 that we haven’t needed breakthrough in one area or another…or, more often, in several areas at once.

I don’t mean to say we haven’t had breakthrough at all in the last 12 years, because the more breakthrough you need, the more you end up getting. But as soon as one issue is conquered, another surfaces, and it’s not so much about constant spiritual attack as it is that as soon as one mission is complete, another one begins.

When we started learning about surrender and living on mission, we said goodbye to the comfort zone – sayonara, adios – and life has been moving fast ever since. But breakthrough in a life of surrender is not like hatching out of an eggshell and simply moving on with life. It’s like ever-widening tent pegs, where the canvas keeps stretching and growing supernaturally and we are learning to fill it and take the land.

Or, maybe it is a little like hatching…because once the hatching starts, things are still pretty tenuous and the work is by no means over.

Four of our chicks came a little early and each was so fast we missed most of the process of their hatching. But once they were out, they were weak and exhausted from the battle. They were damp and ugly and precious and heaving, and when they tried to walk it was a whole other battle as they stumbled, with tiny wings flapping and toes that were still curled from their confinement.

I strained my eyes to look at the other eggs through the tiny windows on the incubator, and could see a pip hole on one egg, and a hairline crack on another. I moved my flashlight over all the eggs and watched possible cracks become definite cracks, and from what I could see, six more eggs were getting ready to open.

And I thought, It’s really happening.

When you start to see the breakthrough you’ve been waiting so long for, you can hardly believe it. We think, Really? For me? But then the evidence keeps getting more and more obvious: The kid is behaving. The habit is diminishing. The illness is healing. The favor is growing. The funds are coming in.

But still, there’s waiting. A crack is not a hatch. And a hatch doesn’t guarantee the chick will make it, either. But it’s a good sign – the process is working, things are moving. There’s life here.

I hear Waymaker in the back of my head. Even when I don’t see it, You’re moving; even when I don’t feel it, You’re moving.

Birth and breakthrough are hard. If you are trying to overcome an obstacle or barrier, the fight isn’t over once breakthrough comes — you still have to learn how to live in that achievement: to take new land, to get your legs under you, and to walk in victory.

We’re called to do impossible things, to bite off more than we can chew, to take the land. I’ve seen it happen and experienced it myself, but I’ve never seen it play out as something that was one and done – or won and done. We want breakthrough to happen all at once, but that’s never the way it goes.

Even after the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, they had to make bitter water sweet, and learn how to live off bread from heaven and water from the rock. Later, when they crossed the Jordan, they had to go through circumcision, and then conquer Jericho – and then Ai, and Makkedah, and Libnah, and on and on.

God is reminding us, This is how we take the land, Love: One breakthrough at a time.

The Lord your God will clear away these nations before you little by little.

You may not make an end of them at once, lest the wild beasts grow too numerous for you.

– Deuteronomy 7:22

The timing is slower than we want because there are more enemies than we imagine, and in our case, the wild beasts are often our egos. If we conquered all these difficulties and insecurities and immaturities all at once, it would be like Pandora’s box in reverse – one last thing would remain, and instead of hope it would be pride, which would nullify the progress of eliminating all the rest.

God is constantly growing us into victory that is bigger than ourselves. But before we take dominion over new ground, we must take dominion over the internal ground first. We pray about the stubborn things we want to resist and let Jesus take all the land in us, so we can take all the land He calls us to. This is what wholeness is, and that is why we surrender to win.

It won’t seem as intimidating; it will be educational and it might even be fun. It will be something He adds to our rep-ah-twah, increasing our capacity, stretching our tent pegs as He grows us deep and wide.

We are watching for movement in our breakthrough, holding our breath, because sometimes breakthrough hatches fast. As fussy and anxious as we get, this brief period is a gift to witness.

If our eyes aren’t turned the other way, we’ll see the cracks in the obstacle we’ve been facing. Sit here in this tension for a little while and see what the Lord brings, it’s just a short time. Suddenly in the surrender the answer will come, the barrier will be broken, and we’ll look at the most recent battleground and say adios, sayonara, we’ve got another mission to do, because wholeness is how we take the land…but surrender is how we keep it.