Her Process Toward Freedom

The other day I was sitting at my computer working when I heard my daughter calling from my room with a question in her voice, “Mom? There’s a bird in your room….. ??”

She said she had gone in my room to get the Costco card, when she saw a cute little bird decoration on top of the lamp. She thought to herself, “I didn’t know Mom had a bird decoration on her lamp.” And as she was thinking that, the bird turned and looked at her. Then she realized it wasn’t a decoration after all!

I came to see what she was talking about. Sure enough, there was a little bird perched on my lamp. That little bird was in the wrong environment!

Earlier in the day, I had stepped out into the sunshine while I was talking on the phone, and the bird must have flown into my room while I left the door open to the beautiful spring air.  The bird must have thought the open door was an invitation to go in, but she found herself in a very unfamiliar and wrong place.

Perhaps you’ve come to realize that you find yourself in the wrong place. Perhaps years ago you found the open door of bringing just-like-school methods home, and the open door of embracing the same family values you saw all around you, and you flew in through them, thinking it would be nice in there.  But now, you’re thinking you’re not in the right place after all.

I knew I needed to help the little bird get back into the right environment and be free. The first thing I did, was close all the other doors in my room. I closed the bathroom door, and the closet door, and the bedroom door, but opened wide the sliding glass door to the freedom the bird needed. I started to hem the bird in, and narrow its options so that it couldn’t go deeper into the wrong environment.

Has the Lord been doing that for you? Have you had the feeling increasing in you that something’s not quite right, and you just can’t keep going deeper into the way you’re seeing others around you homeschooling, or deeper into the way others around you are attempting to disciple their families according to the typical church-going-family model?

Next I got closer to the bird in order to make it fly and attempt to get out. The little bird was so confused and so frightened, that it went in every which direction, but did not find the door to freedom. It flapped vigorously, trying to find a comfortable place to land, but kept coming up against the walls. Finally, it came to rest on the smoke detector.

It had exerted a lot of effort, and searched all around and come to a different part of the wrong environment. I was the one agitating it, and causing it to search for a different place, but it wasn’t finding the right place, just a different one. I agitated it again from the smoke detector, and it flew over to land on one of the ceiling fan blades. Yet another landing place that was still in the wrong environment for freedom.

How about you? Have you felt agitated, maybe even frightened, and attempted to find a different place, a different way, only to discover that you were still in the wrong environment? Have you been aware that it was God’s hand that has been agitating things, getting you to move and do something—getting you to see and feel  that you could not stay there any longer? Perhaps you haven’t seen that it’s the hand of God urging you in what’s been happening to you.

I disturbed the little bird once again from the ceiling fan. Instead of flying out to freedom, the little bird flew up into the corner of my room, and couldn’t find anything to land on. I kept moving toward her to urge her in the right direction. She finally flitted down to the floor, seeming to lack the energy to keep trying.  Now I could really help her.

Not wanting to touch her fragile frame with my big (to her) hand, I went and got a large cup. I slowly got closer and closer. She didn’t try to get away, I think she was too tired. Then I gently scooped her up into the cup and put a piece of paper over it to keep her in. She must have thought it was like a prison! The cramped quarters of the cup were way more confining than the big open room in which she was lost. Now she couldn’t go anywhere.  She flapped and fluttered against the sides of the cup, not knowing that the confines of the cup were going to take her to true freedom, and the right environment for her.

Once I got outside with the cup, moving her in the right direction that she couldn’t find for herself, I released her into freedom in the right environment, one in which she could fly free, and be supplied with all she needed for abundant life.

So be encouraged!! If you feel like you’re being agitated and stirred up toward change, exerting lots of effort only to find you’re still in the wrong place, or if you feel like you’re just too tired to keep trying, or if you’re being confined, and pressed in, and your circumstances are closing in on you, look to the Lord. He is trying to get your attention, and help you out of being stuck in the wrong place, and take you into freedom!  Cooperate with Him, and surrender yourself to His loving hand.

Marilyn Howshall’s book, Empowering the Transfer of Moral Values and Faith can help you begin to understand what the Lord is wanting to do in your life to get you moving and set you free!

~ Barbie Poling