The Call to Fly

"3The watchman opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice."  (John 10:3-4)

Babies know Momma's voice...They sing back the same chirp...Dad joins the song...It's a song that beckons the frightened babies to take the plunge out of the nest...The bush trembles at their movement.  Momma leaves for a moment and the babies call loudly.  She comes back, on the ground now, making her demands louder.  Their insistent chirp back seems to be screaming, "I'm not ready to go."  She continues to come back, each time with more food the strengthen the apprehensive, readying babies.

New seasons of life for our babies are so hard at times, but God blesses us with them so that we can call them out of the nest to try out what we've taught them to spread their wings and FLY!  (Sidenote...I have had 3 litters (i know they're not called litters, but you get it) of baby robins from the same mom and dad all summer.  They have been nesting since April 15th, and the last 3 flew the coop last week...)

Baby Oh Baby

So much has happened since baby robin was born a little over a month ago.  Life has flown at a shutter speed pace, with our 18 year old winding down her Senior year of high school...prom...CATS...graduation...oh, I'm getting sidetracked.  I'll talk about her later.  Back to this bird...God has shown me lots of lessons through this small life.

Lesson #1  Time passes so fast... It seems like just yesterday that my kids were babies.

Lesson #2  Along with this bird, there was another egg that never hatched.  As baby continued to grow, momma robin realized that her other baby would never be a baby, so she kicked it out of the nest to crack on the concrete.  What God showed me about this is that so many times we focus on what might have been that we miss out on what already is.  If momma would have continued to sit on the nest trying to hatch the other egg, she would begin to neglect the baby that already lived. 

Lesson #3  A momma's work is never done...nothing more to say about that!!

Lesson #4  Sometimes life scares the bejeebies out of us, but God still holds us in the palm of His Hands.  On day 12 of this new life, we had a bunch of people over to our house for Kinsey's graduation celebration.  As we were preparing, we scared the baby just one too many times and it literally jumped out of the nest and ran off into the bushes.  It wasn't quite ready to fly!  We never saw baby again...We kept checking the nest, watching for momma, and praying that she found him, but resting in the fact that God cares about all of His creation.  I honestly don't know what became of him.  I'm just hoping that he got to try out his wings!

Lesson #5  Life moves on...4 or 5 days have passed, and I was shocked to see momma robin come back to the nest and what does she do?  She lays 3 MORE EGGS!