Perch

I have fallen in love with birds. Not the real kind that live in cages or fly around and leave proof of their visit on my car. Just the kinds that are showing up in decorating, on necklaces, and on Twitter. The perching bird. The bird that is resting between flights.

The perching bird looks calm. She’s not worried about where the next worm will come from or how she will get twigs to build a nest or how she will challenge her babies mentally now that school is out for the summer. She is not concerned about braces or promotions or A/C units that break.

She is perching. She is Resting.

I think I surround myself with the perching bird because I want to be like her. She is sitting, but she is ready at any moment to fly. And she doesn’t perch too long. Just enough to take a look around, catch a breath, and move on.

I don’t know how to perch very well. Life is either going at 100 miles an hour with no stopping, or it comes to a complete stop due to exhaustion or burn-out, where I feel like I might just not get up again. Perching is definitely something we have to learn – stop long enough, but don’t stop too long.

Last week, I had another miscarriage, and all of the emotions that come with that are swirling around inside of me – the rationalizing, the grief, the questioning. Sometimes I find myself creating busy-ness to distract myself from it all, and sometimes I find myself dwelling on it, not able to really move on.

But this morning, God told me to Perch.

Matthew 6:26 says, “Look at the birds. They don't plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren't you far more valuable to him than they are?”

We all have things going on in our lives that we wrestle with, whether those are big or seemingly small things. It doesn’t matter. God is calling us to rest for a while. Take a minute to look out, catch our breath, let Him renew our spirits. But let’s not sit so long that it turns into dwelling or getting “stuck” in whatever our struggle is. I remember my Mom telling me to grieve and experience my emotion, but that the world would go on and to not let it go on without me. She essentially was telling me to perch and be ready to fly.

I pray that we all learn this art of perching – resting – and that we will know more concretely than we know our own names that God watches over us, that we can trust Him, that we are valuable to Him, and that He cares for us.