Teaching A Bird With Clipped Wings to Fly

"Most birds were created to fly.

Being grounded for them is a limitaion within their ability to fly,

not the other way around.

You were created to be loved--

for you to live as if you were unloved is a limitation.

Living unloved is like clipping a bird's wings

and removing it's ability to fly.

Pain has a way of clipping our wings

and keeping us from being able to fly.

And if left unresolved for very long you

can almost forget that you were created to fly in the first place."

--W. P. Young--

God has entrusted my husband and I to be caretakers of a few birds who've had their wings clipped by pain. For them there is the pain of rejection and neglect by birth families. There is the pain of abuse (physical, sexual, emotional and verbal) from a system that was supposedly created to protect them. And now they are in the place where they have for gotten that they were created to love and be loved in the first place so they are experiencing the pain of learning to love.

There is a cycle of trust and love that children learn in the first few years of life. They first learn to trust mom and dad to take care of their needs. When the baby cries, mommy picks him up to feed him or change him or rock him. He then knows that mom can be trusted to take care his needs. But what about the babies that cry and no one is there to pick them up? Or the ones whose mom will sometimes come to pick them up then at other times will come hit them to get them to shut up? How do these little ones learn to trust anyone? The answer is they don't. If they can fight hard enough to survive they learn that if they don't take care of themselves no one will.

During the second year of life, most babies learn that mom and dad can be trusted to keep them safe. So, when sweet pea goes toddling toward the road, daddy will grab her hand and tell her no. Maybe he will even swat her little bottom to keep her from running into the road (better a soar bottom than an injured or dead child). This teaches the child that daddy will protect her and keep her safe. But what about the child whose daddy isn't there to keep her from climbing onto the roof at age 3. Or whose mom isn't there to tell her to stay home and not wander in the street? How do these children learn that adults will keep them safe? They don't! They learn that they need to be in control of everything.

When I remember these things it is easy to love my children because I can feel the pain they've been through and understand why they act the way they do BUT life (at least life in our house) is not a series of calm, reflective events that cause me to think constantly about what they've been through. At our house life is what we like to call...organized chaos!

I'm not thinking about their pain when I walk in their room and find dozens of socks stuck in a hole in the wall because they did not want to match them and fold them. I'm not thinking about their pain when they are mad and smearing boogers on the walls of our house. I'm not thinking about their pain when they are stealing from the 4H treasury or hiding knives in their rooms or ripping apart their siblings toys. I am much too self centered in those moments to think of anything but my anger and inconvenience. How dare they come into this home that we have so graciously provided for them and tear it apart like this. We don't deserve this.

A few weeks ago our pastor said something that has stuck with me and convicted me. He said that it is easy to ACT like a Christian but much harder to REACT like one. Think about that. How do you react when others are unkind to you? It's easy to be kind but another thing altogether to react out of kindness when someone has just been mean to you.

So, the real reason I stuggle with loving these kids is not because they are difficult kids (althought they can be) but because I'm out of touch with the source of love....GOD!

1Jn 4:7&8 says.....

Dear friends, let us continue to love one another,

for love comes from God.

Anyne who loves is born of God and knows God.

But anyone who does not love does not know God

---for God is love. (NLT)

If I am in touch with God (who is love) I will be able to react in love when these little things happen around our house.I don't always (well, almost never) like hearing that the problem is with me and not someone or something else but this is where I am right now on this RADical journey....learning that I need to once again draw near to God so that he will come near to me.