Little Lessons Learned






I finished my last post suggesting that we develop gratitude. That gratitude changes your perspective on everything.
This afternoon, while commenting on a friends blog about baby birds and nests, something occurred to me.

You see, there is a tiny nest of baby birds in one of my planters, on my patio. I've been watching the momma bird the past several weeks. She has deligently sat on that nest without fail, and now that the eggs have hatched, she is non stop in her search for food. I can't count the times that she flies off in search of food, and how tirelessly she returns with bugs and what not loaded up in her beak, only to feed the wee ones and go flying off again.

She's a single mom bird too. No daddy bird to help out. I imagine that when she's off looking for food, she's wondering about her babies back at the nest, slightly panicked that something might be happening to them while she's doing her duty. And that is when it occurred to me. My mom was a single mom. She made lots of mistakes, and yes, I have held many of them in my heart, against her. Forgiveness is something that I have learned to grow and walk in everyday, that mystical opportunity for grace that I am learning to live in to, rather than that expectation of "Christian duty" that I've been told I must live up to.

And, I think it's working. Because as I have been watching that little momma bird protect and provide for her babies, there is gratitude taking root in my heart, and I whisper, "thank you, Lord, thank you for mom". And like all the mystical, grace filled opportunities He gives us, gratitude to and for mom will be yet another thing that I learn to live into.

Maybe that how it works...first comes willingness, then comes love, then comes forgiveness, then comes appreciation and gratitude, full circle back to love again? I wonder.

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