Waiting for the birds

The other day, my daughter Kate came running into the house, hair flying and cheeks pink, telling me I just had to come see this. I followed her outside, and she began talking a mile a minute — something about a baby bird and the neighbor’s deck and her little red chairs. I wasn’t following, but when I saw three small red chairs stacked up on top of each other under the wooden birdhouse attached to our garage, it all became clear.

We’d had four baby birds in the birdhouse for the last few weeks. Mama bird came faithfully throughout the days, stuck her head into the hole and dropped in all sorts of grubby things for her babies. Kate had watched, awestruck, each time we saw the mama fly to the birdhouse. She kept talking about how she wished she had a cute little baby bird, and couldn’t we just lift the lid and look at them a little bit? I explained to her how birds will stop feeding their babies if humans touch them or are around them too much, and I assured her the mama bird was taking good care of the babies.

Fast forward to the red chairs stacked up under the birdhouse and Kate trying to explain what had happened. In the midst of her nervous excitement and flailing arms, I realized she’d tried to hurry the process up a little. After seeing one of the baby birds poke its head out of the hole, she decided it must be trying to get out and needed her help, hence the chairs. She climbed up on them, incredibly not crashing to the ground herself, and helped the bird out of the hole. She said it flew down to the ground and scurried under our neighbor’s porch. That’s when she came and got me. She was determined that we needed to find the bird and feed it. 

A little nervous about what we’d find if we actually located the baby bird, I told her we couldn’t feed it. “The mama is never going to feed that baby again because I helped him!” The weight of what she’d done crashed down on her, and fat alligator tears rolled down her cheeks. “I was just trying to help him get out of there.”

As I hugged her and told her I understood, I realized somewhere in there was a good life lesson for her to learn, but I wasn’t sure what it was. Don’t jump ahead of God’s plan and try to fix things yourself? Sometimes getting involved in a situation where you don’t belong just messes things up further? I knew none of that would make an impact on my 5-year-old animal-loving daughter who just wanted to help a baby bird.

Instead, I told her waiting is hard, but that we have to do it all the time. I told her we have to remember that God is taking care of the little birds just like He takes care of us, and we have to trust that even when we can’t see how it’s going to work out. 

That seemed to make sense to her, but she was still so worried about that baby bird under the neighbor’s deck. I asked her if she saw the baby stretch his wings out when he flew down to the driveway. When she nodded, I said if he could use his wings and fly, he probably was big enough to be out of the nest on his own and could probably find his own food. I told her the baby would be fine. Was it a lie? Partly. But I think God probably understood. 

To connect with Lauren, email her at LaurenKDenton@gmail.com or find her on Twitter @LaurenKDenton.