Leaving the nest

We can't use our front door right now.

Everything is fine with it, the hinges are great, the knob turns, the deadbolt is in the unlocked position.

No, the issue is that a mother bird chose our spring-themed wreath as the place to build her nest and lay her eggs. At the time of writing this blog, we're on week 6 or 7 (SIX SEVEN!) of having this little family coming into existence right there where people need to come and go from our home, the eggs have just hatched and are now adding a lovely back-track to our lives, and we are watching every day to join the celebration of the day they leave the nest and take flight.

Did you catch the prophetic nature of what we're watching and what we're experiencing?

It's a bit on the nose isn't it?

Man, I just love Jesus.

As we prepare to leave our own nest (the nest that I, Cole, have spent 83%+ of my life in), I've been captivated by the different reactions I saw from our little bird family. I think they might actually line up with the reactions we could have made over this last year. After all, King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done,

and there is nothing new under the sun.

We'd be kidding ourselves if we thought that our God, the One same yesterday and today and forever (Hebrews 13), would have different patterns depending on the level of sentience within creation something holds. We can learn a lot of things from the flowers, or so says Alice as she goes into wonderland...and the adage can easily be edited to include birds

We're all going to leave a nest at some point, maybe you're looking to leave the nest soon, maybe you left the nest a while ago and are now looking back at it with pride or shame, or maybe you have a nest-leaving that has yet to reveal itself down the road. Let's take a look together at what I've observed in mama-bird and in myself and see what we can gleam from our fine-feathered-friends.

On the Offensive

Numerous of our friends have either almost been or actually been introduced to mama-bird through her dive-bombing out of the nest as they approached the front door. It's a humorous moment to watch and a scary one to be on the receiving ed of.

But man, how many times has something gone wrong, been challenging, brought fear and anxiety, or otherwise affected us in some negatively-viewed way over this last year where I have wanted to come out swinging. At anything. At anyone.

It's natural to want to protect ourselves. It's even more natural to want to protect our fledglings. The issue comes in, and this happens so often, is when there's actually nothing to protect anyone from. The Spirit of Fear loves to masquerade as a beneficial friend coming to help us stay alert and aware when we need to. But in reality, it's nothing more than a supernatural force actively trying to pull us away from the Vine in which we are to abide (John 15) .

So yea, we've had some moments around Casa Forehand where some dive-bombs were experienced or made. You probably have had these in your life too.

I'm pleased to say that these last few weeks mama-bird and our little family have both chilled out and have remembered to aim before we shoot (as it were), because often the thing we're aiming at just needs to be noticed, not shot.

Hunkering Down

When I say that mama bird did NOT leave that nest for about a week or two straight, I mean it it. If we ever opened the front door or walked up to get a package (from the outside so as to not disturb her) we would see her little head peeking out and looking at us while she did. not. move.

The temptation to pull in, hunker down, circle the wagons, keep it close, or any other advective-laced term that we could have come up with has come in and tried to take a seat at our table more than once (heck, more than 10 times easily). And, if I am being honest, there have been moments where it would have been so nice to just spend 12 months in our house, talking about the transition, and (frankly) commiserating with one another on the things we're giving up to follow this call.

But, we really didn't do that. I am really proud of the work we have done to keep connection at the center of our last days here. We haven't always done it perfectly. Granted there were some things that we did hunker away from for a bit, but we've re-entered almost all of those spaces with a month and a half left to go.

We love our friends. We love our extended family. We love the church community we have been a part of for the last 7 years (the entirety of our children's lives). We love leading worship. We love so many things about our lives in our little corner of the USA.

And we're going to grieve, we are grieving, many of these things.

But, we've also been able to see this season as a gift to relish, as a call to hone-in on these things that we love. And, I feel, like we've done that. We have spent most afternoons out in the cul-de-sac with our neighbors playing with our kids. We've visited Kelsey's family out of state more in the last 12 months than we came close to in the preceding 12. We've gone on holidays with both sets of grandparents. We've served our deeply loved Oak City Church as worship leaders and instrumentalists on their teams. We've gone to the zoo, the gardens, the farmers market, and done so many more "Birmingham things"on top of that.

And we have given it our all and received so much back from our giving away.

Facilitating Growth

Kels and I have been much like mama-bird in our focus and care for the development and preparation of our children in these days. Day after day after day after day, mama-bird has either gathered scraps to build a nest, sat on eggs, or gone out foraging for food for her babies in the explicit purpose of preparing them to leave the nest. We're doing the same for Walter, Miriam, and Arthur

Whether it's watching movies set in England (Paddington and Mary Poppins are dear friends these days), reading books about the UK, cooking and eating British foods, or slowly packing away favorite toys, set-abouts, decor, and clothes...we've been working (and it's work) at preparing our little birds to fly.

Development doesn't happen overnight. The shortest mammalian gestation period (courtesy of the 4cm in size Estrucan Shrew) is still about two-weeks long. I think our western, American culture has spoon fed us a lie that we can develop at some superhuman speed. But, in reality, development is a process that (often) takes an outside force (in our kid's case - their parents) to walk one through and into.

The reality we have lived is one where we've held our kids through meltdowns, fear, anger, lack of understanding, and excitement.

But here, a meager 43 days before the move, I feel my eyes fill with tears as I remember our 7-year-old going through the over 100 transformers he has spent 7 years collecting and deciding to give a trash-bag full of them to the new worship pastor's son, or when he looked at me just yesterday during carpool and said "Dad, when are we moving to England already? Im so ready to go!", or when Miriam and Arthur have been so happy when we tell them that we're donating some of their things to help kids who don't have as much as they do, and their eyes light up and they say things like "Like Jesus did!"

Look, I'm their dad, so I recognize this is just me bragging on my kids. But, what I've learned in this season is a small, human understanding of what our Heavenly Father must feel when we allow Him to slowly develop us into a new area of strength.

Maybe it's a bit like what a mama-bird feels when her babies take their first step out of the nest, spread their wings, and fly away with her.

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So, here we are. Moving to another country, another culture, another community in just over a month. Leaving behind pretty much everything we've ever known. We're getting ready to bring our brood out of the nest and into the open air.

And it'll have it's moments. We're not going into this thing blind or unaware that stuff's going to be different, challenging, and whatever else we will experience. But we also know that they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles.

Maybe we're all a little bit like mama and baby birds.

nuturing.

preparing.

to fly.