This spring is a little extra special. On one side of my living room window, I am one month into raising a brand new baby boy. That’s why I’ve been absent from the blog here. I’ve taken a month off to focus on recovering and establishing new routines after becoming a family of four.
On the other side of the living room window, there is a mother bird raising her babies in a nest she built in a hole in the board behind our front porch gutter.
As my baby has grown and his cries have gotten louder, I can hear the tweets of the baby birds getting louder as well.
Obviously the birds will grow faster and leave the nest much sooner. My baby will be a baby for much longer than those birds will be. They will clear out and I’ll still be on my side of the window, raising tiny humans.
It’s easy to think that one form of life is easier than the other. That mother bird will be done with her duties long before I can think about feeling like myself again.
Every season has its challenges. It’s easy to look through the window and think what’s on the other side is a better path than the one you’re currently on. It’s easy to feel lost and adrift, especially in the sea of early motherhood.
Ecclesiastes reminds us that “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens” (3:1). Among the items listed following that statement in Ecclesiastes 3, there is also a time to rise to every challenge that comes your way and a time to back down and rest. There is a time to nudge the baby birds out of the nest and a time to sit back and snuggle them while you simply sit and hold them. There is a time to push yourself and a time to back off. Every season is beautiful in its own way because God makes everything beautiful in its time (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
There is beauty in the lives on both sides of the window.
No matter which side you find yourself on, I pray that you will see that beauty for yourself.
Blessings,
~Lynne
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