Part 1 | Part 2

The first thing on my mind when I woke the next morning: Did he make it? I had to know if my baby bird had survived the first night. I was already unbelievably attached to him. If God had indeed given me this bird to distract me from my impatience waiting for R&R, well, it was working. And Birdy, as I began to refer to him, did indeed make it through the night! He greeted me happily with chirps and wriggling wings as I peeked into his box, and it brought me such joy. He truly became my baby. Though I didn’t birth him, I worried about him like a mother, and he was utterly dependent on me for everything.

I was worried, though. I hadn’t wanted a bird. I was just trying to save a life. Now, it seemed I was stuck. I had to keep caring for him, and it soon became apparent that he was bonded to me in such a way as would make it very dangerous to try and release him. Also, how would I get anything done between all the time spent caring for him? What had I gotten myself into?

But every time I fed him or spent time with him, it became a real joy. It was…uplifting! Over the next two days we settled into a rhythm of feedings and naps, and I found that I could find time for other things (chores) in between times. Birdy was happy to snuggle against his heating pad and rest in between feedings; he didn’t need me 24/7. I managed to learn how to better manage my time, and around this time I started to wonder just how God was using this. Maybe there was more to this than just distracting me for the time being. Maybe, I thought, this is actually a bit of preparation for motherhood? Maybe it’s preparation for the future, for keeping other birds – maybe even chickens – so that I won’t be afraid of them?

Each night, I put Birdy to bed and prayed he would make it through another night, and each morning, I prayed for the strength to give Birdy what he needed as well as do all the other things I needed to do. We continued to grow more attached to each other even as Birdy became more independent. There came a day when it seemed he no longer needed or wanted to stay in his little shoe box between feedings. I would sometimes put him in and close the lid so it was only open a crack and thus force him to rest a bit, but at other times I would set him on the windowsill to look outside, or he would sit on the open lid of his box and preen and watch me.

I got a lot of help and support from the members at Pigeon-Talk Forums, and it was a few members there that began to say that Birdy’s poops were not looking so good. He might be sick. I felt horrible! Birdy had just gotten past what I’d considered the danger zone and was finally seeming to thrive, and now he might be sick? I was told all kinds of problems that might be causing the bad poops, and I had to drive and call all around trying to find a medication that no one seemed to carry. Even once I found a store that would ship it to me overnight, it got delayed, and it seemed like I would never get it! After I received it and started giving Birdy his doses, his poops did not improve, and we had some more scares. He threw up his formula several times and was acting very lethargic, and finally I took him to a vet who very kindly worked us in between his other patients to check Birdy over and take some stool samples for testing. Birdy came out with a clean bill of health – such a load off my mind! Such a relief!

So many things could have gone wrong… There were so many mistakes I made in caring for this bird, and my efforts were so imperfect. He could have died from the mistakes I made in the first day alone! I fed him when he was cold. I left the formula out all day and reheated it, allowing bacteria to grow. I made the formula with hot tap water, possibly introducing bad things to him from the hot water pipes. I made his formula too thick sometimes. I fed him way too much some days, so he could have aspirated (this, in fact, is probably what was causing him to vomit his formula on occasion – overfeeding). I didn’t keep him perfectly protected from drafts in his box. And yet throughout it all, Birdy not only survived but actually thrived under my care. The Lord must have been protecting him from my blunders.

God seemed to reveal to me over time spent with Birdy that he really cares for all of his creation. Maybe the whole experience was less about me and more about showing God’s love, even for something as insignificant as a dove – one dove among hundreds just in my neighborhood alone. Or maybe he intended this to save Birdy, teach me about his love, prepare me for motherhood, distract me, keep Marty and me together and focused during R&R, and many other things… Maybe he provided exactly what I/we needed at exactly the right time, and used it in even more ways than I can imagine. That does sound like my God.

“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?”
Matthew 6:26 (NIV)

“Who provides food for the raven when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food?”
Job 38:41

“I know every bird in the mountains, and the creatures of the field are mine.”
Psalm 50:11

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.”
Matthew 10:29

(Click to watch videos: Baby Dove Feeding | Friday Morning Feeding | Feeding Birdy 12 days old | Feeding 5/2)

Part 1

I started trying to research what to do with the baby bird I found before I even got home, but my phone didn’t prove very helpful. Once home, I hurriedly found an empty shoe box and put a rag inside. I put the bird down inside and grabbed by laptop to start googling. Was I going to have to dig up worms? Was it a grackle? A dove? The bird started to utter tiny, pathetic-sounding chirps, and my mind kept going back to the time my mom had tried to save a baby bird, but it had died within the first 24 hours.

I could find nothing helpful online, which isn’t too surprising, looking back. Different types of birds need different kinds of care, so most helpful information is found for searching for your specific bird type. I didn’t know what else to do but take the bird in his shoe box to Petsmart and see if someone there could help.

I wasn’t feeling very hopeful as I walked in to Petsmart and approached a young cashier who looked utterly bored with life. I showed her the bird in the box as I asked if anyone might be able to help, and at first her face seemed to be saying Are you crazy? We’re just a retail store.. We don’t actually know anything about animals. But that’s not what she said. Instead, she pointed toward the fish wall and said there was a girl over there who could help.

I had to wait as the employee finished helping another customer. Then, I showed her what was in the box. She looked the bird over, checking under his wings and all around to see if he was okay. She told me he was a dove, which surprised me. Who knew doves started out so ugly? She also said he was very cold and dehydrated and hungry. She was very helpful in telling me just how to warm him but make sure he wasn’t too warm. She showed me the baby bird formula and said there were instructions inside. She said to use a syringe and aim toward the left side while I’m facing the bird because otherwise it could go into his lungs. She told me it had to be warm enough that it digests correctly, but not warm enough to burn through the sensitive crop. She also said that, most likely, he wasn’t going to make it no matter what I did.

I thanked her and told her that I at least had to try. The formula was only $10, anyway. So, I bought it and headed home.

The first feeding was quite an adventure. I didn’t learn until later that I wasn’t supposed to feed him while he was cold. I thought food would be priority number one, so I didn’t bother to let him warm up on my heating pad before pulling out a clean syringe that I just happened to have gotten from the vet the previous week to help give my cat his antibiotics. The formula was mixed and warm, the syringe was ready… And the bird…would not…open…his beak.

Aren’t they supposed to gape when they’re hungry?! Why won’t he open!?

I didn’t want to touch it! Okay, so it wasn’t diseased, but… I admit it, I was a bit scared of birds. And I knew I should limit human contact if the bird was to have any hope of being released, which was my full intention. But I soon realized I was going to have to get over my fears or the bird was going to die. I wrapped him in the rag and began to try and open his beak with my fingernail.

Most of the formula from that first feeding went…well…everywhere but his crop. Quite a bit of it actually ended up in his eyeball, which kind of worried me. I had no idea how to tell how much he’d actually swallowed, but after having to reheat the formula 3 times, I decided it was time for a break. I put the bird in his box again to start warming up and drying off while I looked at videos on YouTube of other people feeding baby doves.

I gave him rather un-successful feedings again several times that day, trying the syringe and eye dropper methods, before I finally got one good feeding in with the plastic bag method. And then, as it grew dark, I moved him to the guest room with the door closed (to protect from the cat), covered his box with a blanket to keep the heat in, and prayed hard that he would somehow survive his first night.

(Click for videos of baby bird’s first day with me: Baby Mourning Dove and End of First Day…)

So there I was, anxiously awaiting the day when we would finally receive R&R dates and driving myself crazy with both the impatience and with the stress of super-cleaning the house and making everything perfect. I’d had to back off from my hour-long, fast-paced, daily exercise walks because of pain in my ankle (and knee and hip) to the point where I was only walking slowly for about half an hour, maybe 3 times a week.

Usually when I walked, I would put some thought into where I was going and what path I was taking. But this particular morning, I took off with barely a thought, in a direction that I don’t frequently walk. I tried to walk carefully, with good posture, so as to increase the amount of time I could walk before the pain set in. I expected my ankle to start hurting at any moment after the 15-minute mark, but it didn’t. So when I had a choice in which path to take – cutting it short and heading straight home or taking a longer, round-about path that would prolong the walk – I took the longer route, going a direction I’d only gone once or twice before.

Shortly after turning onto that path, the pain started to set in, and I had to decrease my pace. In my mind, I started planning my route to get home. And then I saw it.

A baby bird. In the middle of the sidewalk. Dead, I thought, as I walked past. But something made me stop and turn around. Was it dead? I tapped it ever so gently with my shoe, and it moved, slightly. Not dead! A baby bird, and it was alive.

Hmmm. Alive, but not looking so good, I thought. In fact, it looked pretty ugly. I had no idea what kind of bird it was, and I worried that it could be diseased. I decided it must have blown from its nest, as we had had very high speed winds over the last few days, and even some tornado watches. Not sure what to do, I started looking around. There were tall trees – way too tall for me to reach any of the branches – but they were pretty far away, and this bird obviously couldn’t fly – maybe couldn’t even walk. The closest tree was the most likely place for a nest, but I couldn’t find one. I looked all around the immediate area while the little bird lay low on the ground and tried to brace itself against the wind.

I squatted next to it. What could I do? I nearly convinced myself to walk away, but I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t leave it. I knew the bird’s mother could be watching me, but I also knew she couldn’t very well lift it back into the nest. It was defenseless, and it seemed in bad shape, and I couldn’t just leave it. I knew that it would die, if I did.

Afraid to actually touch the bird (both because it looked diseased and because I partially believed the lie that the bird’s mother would abandon it if a human touched it), I found two little twigs on the ground and carefully slid them underneath its body. The little bird weakly gripped the sticks with its feet, which helped me to lift it onto my lap as I knelt on the ground. I pulled out my shirt and set the bird on it and set off toward home, trying not to jostle it too much. The little bird quietly moved so it was upright and rode with me. I walked so slowly, trying to make the ride smooth for the bird, that it took a good 45 minutes or so to walk the mile home.

Oh, how I wish I’d learned a better work ethic at a younger age. I feel like maybe if I had learned earlier it wouldn’t be such a struggle now. Now, I feel like an old dog trying to learn a new trick, and it feels very much like an uphill battle. In fact, it has me determined to make sure I try to teach my kids this lesson from early on…

Life is Work

And Americans are lazy.

Or maybe just people, in general, are lazy?!

At the very least, I’m lazy, but I’m also pretty sure I’m not the only one!

My mom did her best raising me alone, and I’m so grateful for all that she taught me, but I still grew up lazy. I didn’t learn work ethic. I didn’t learn that life itself is work. Rather, I waited for everything to come to me. I never cleaned my room because I was happy to live in my own mess, I didn’t have to put in much effort to excel at school, and I didn’t even bother trying to get in shape though I was overweight from a pretty young age. In other words, I ate what I wanted, when I wanted, and played all the time, and never did anything that required effort unless I was literally forced into it.

EVERYTHING is Work

1. Cleaning
   Now I’m grown, and I’m no longer happy with messes, but I am often too lazy to do anything about them because – well, because it’s work! And it’s not just a little work here and there, like when I was little and cleaned my room once every few month (yes, I know, lucky me – you probably had to clean every week). No, it’s not just a now-and-then thing; it’s a daily effort.
2. Exercise
   I never exercised as a kid, despite being unhappy with my body. I never played sports, either. I just played with my friends once in a while and basically did what I wanted to do without worrying about whether I was active or not. And I didn’t know – that is, it never even occurred to me – that such a lifestyle wouldn’t be sufficient for my body. Even as a teenager, when I started to realize that some people may need to exercise to control their weight, I thought it was a last-ditch attempt, only to be really considered if dieting alone couldn’t fix the problem. I really thought I could continue my whole life this way! But God didn’t make our bodies to sit around inside all day on the computer! I believe He made our bodies to work and to play, and as our work becomes less and less active, we have to make an effort to exercise in order to stay healthy. Because it’s GOOD for us. It’s not a punishment, as I once believed. It’s not something you do because you have to in order to control your weight. It’s just a good, healthy habit that happens to require daily effort.
3. Eating
   When I was younger, food was very much an instant gratification kind of thing. My single, working mother rarely had time to prepare a meal from scratch, so we ate a lot of frozen pizza, instant macaroni and cheese, and other such things. Now, I’m ashamed of all the junk I’ve put into my body for over 20 years, but at the same time I realize that in order to eat well, I have to intentionally work at it! And not just once in a while, but every day! I have to think about what I’m eating as well and when and why I’m eating it, and I have to take time out of my day to prepare it.
4. Relationships
   Even my relationships take work! Who would have thought? In grade school, if you’re in my generation, you called your friends when you were bored, and you were allowed to talk, to maybe one of you would visit the other’s house – simple. The only potential problem was having one or the other set of parents say no for some reason. But as a grown-up, it’s not so simple any more. Friends all come with their own problems, and to have a good relationship, you can’t just call them when you’re bored; you have to be there for them when they need you. And sometimes you have to learn how to love people in spite of their flaws, or in spite of distance, or in spite of lack of time to “hang out!”

And the same is true for a relationship with God! As a child, my mom prayed with me before bed and before meals, and I went to Sunday school. As a teenager, I started to understand that it required more than that, and I started to try harder, but I still thought that it would be easy. Only now am I beginning to understand how much daily work has to be put into that relationship to keep it really strong.

Skills, and the maintaining of them, is the same way. Oy with the work already!

Teaching Work Ethic

How will I (eventually) teach my kids about work? How will I get them to understand good work ethic?

• Well, I guess the first step is learning it myself. And I’m trying to – really, I am. For the past few months, I’ve been working on building one good habit each month so that I learn to do the things that are good for me.
• And I think another part of it will be building good habits in them when they’re young. (I always thought that if I’d been made to play a sport when I was a kid, I would have had a much easier time learning a habit of daily exercise.) I can see it now… my kids will probably hate me for making them do things, and I will wish they could see how I’m doing it for their own good… and it’s probably going to be way harder than I anticipate. But hopefully I can help a little by teaching them healthy habits.
• Finally, if I can teach them what my friends and I learned in our study of Ecclesiastes last year. All is vanity. Too much work is no good, but neither is too much play. BALANCE is important. So, have one hand of toil and one hand of rest. I think I can help to teach my kids a healthy work ethic by helping them rest and enjoy play- and rest-time.

Just some thoughts…

Think about what goes into your body. Think about exercise. Think about your relationships. By not allowing play time to be all day, every day, it becomes more precious to me when I do get that time, and my quiet times are more able to fuel me for the work I know I must do for the rest of the time.

And the best part is that work doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Work is rewarding! And when I’m feeling lazy, that’s exactly what I try to remind myself of! lol

(An example of rewarding work: Me with my first-ever homemade bread!)

I’ve got the itch. It’s time for R&R. Past time, in fact, if we go by the month Hubby requested for leave. We still don’t know when it’s actually happening, but we know it’s coming soon!

We’re sort of glad that we’re getting mid-tour leave in the last half of deployment, but the long wait to see each other has been kind of killer. Now, with the time fast approaching, it’s almost all I can think about. I spend so much time thinking, planning, imagining him here. We’ve talked about our expectations for the time (I would recommend this highly to people looking to R&R coming up or even redeployment; don’t just assume you’re on the same page!), things we want to do, people he wants to visit. I’ve made to-do lists to get the house ready and shopping lists to make sure we’re stocked up and have all his favorites, and he has started thinking about foods he wants to eat so he can experience all the good stuff before going back. It’s very exciting!

A couple days ago, I was picking up some R&R-related items at the store, and I must have been looking pretty happy as I thought about his arrival – enough that one lady commented on how great my smile was!

The last time we faced R&R, Hubby and I weren’t married or even dating at the time, and he stayed mostly with his family in between making visits to me and other friends. This time it’s going to be totally different. Neither of us has experienced this before, so we may not really know what to expect.

I’m just trying to keep in mind that I should expect a great time and not worry about imperfections. It won’t be perfect, there will probably be some bumps, but we can still have a wonderful time together. My only real hopes are that we have a relaxing, enjoyable visit that refreshes us and helps us make it through the last few months of deployment! Do you have any other tips for how to mentally (or emotionally, or physically) prepare yourself for R&R?

(R&R or mid-tour leave is a two week break during deployment. The soldier basically gets to go home – or somewhere else – and chill out with no responsibilities for a while before going back. Travel time from the deployment location to home doesn’t count, which is good since it can take anywhere from a day or two to a few weeks, but as soon as he or she arrives at home, they get 14 days until their return flight. This is pretty standard for all year-long-or-longer Army deployments. I don’t really know how to works in other branches or with shorter deployments.)

I’ve been thinking about how deployment is changing my perception of time. I’m starting to realize that God’s using it to give me a whole new perspective, and I think in some ways I’m understanding God a little tiny bit better. Like I have a little more understanding of the idea of him being outside of time itself.

When I have to go a few weeks without seeing friends, I sometimes chuckle on the inside when they explain on our next meeting how much they’ve missed me, while I feel that hardly any time at all has passed. What’s the big deal? Next to having to wait a year to see my other half again, to feel him and look into his eyes… Well, let’s just say it makes all these little gaps of weeks and months feel like nothing.

I can’t really imagine what it is like for God to be outside of time, but if the (global) church is his passion, his love, his other half, so to speak, and he is separated from her for… well, a long, long time… Well, I can imagine that feeling now. She fell away from him, and he won’t be reunited with her until basically the end of this world. Like a year’s separation for me, and how impossible and horrible it seems to a normal married couple, God’s separated from his bride the church for… thousands, if not millions of years. How insignificant must other, shorter increments of time feel to Him? To me it gives new meaning to the verse that says a thousand years is like a day to the Lord.

I’m trying to apply this understanding to my prayer life. See, I’ve been getting frustrated with God for not answering my prayers. Sometimes I pray specifically for the same things for weeks on end, and sometimes I begin to lose hope that he’ll ever hear me and answer. But I have felt like he’s saying to me, “Just because I haven’t answered in a week, you think I’m not listening at all? Trust me! I hear you, and I will answer you. I will meet all your needs. Have patience.”

Sometimes, I’m afraid time won’t ever slow back down. If weeks feel like no time at all, will it still feel like nothing when Hubby is home for two weeks of R&R? Will I have trouble soaking in his presence and enjoying our time together? Will my life speed by too quickly, with this perception of time? I have hope because I’ve known women who have been through deployments with their husbands before who still ached terribly at their husbands’ absence for a week or two of training. So things must eventually return to normal. But hopefully when that happens, I’ll still be able to remember the lesson I learned. Mostly – the patience.

I’ve learned this lesson many times: Heavenly hunger is different from physical hunger. But this is a spiritual lesson, and I feel like those (lessons about God) are kind of unique. Why is it that we only have to learn the same lesson once, or maybe twice if we’re hard-headed… but when it comes to lessons from and about God specifically, about heavenly things, we sometimes learn the lesson a dozen times without it ever sticking? Why is it so easy to forget?

For Example:

• We’ve all learned not to touch fire/stoves. You either took your parents’ word for it, or you had to touch it a couple times to see for yourself how dangerous it is, but after that, you never purposefully do it again. Such is the nature of physical lessons.
• On the other hand, in the Old Testament we see the Jews utterly amazed at God’s power. Yet some time later, they just forget. Again and again God shows them miracles and wonders, and we read it and ask ourselves how anyone could ever doubt after seeing the things those people saw. The parting of the Red Sea? Hello?! Spiritual lessons just don’t seem to stick!

And I do the same thing in my own life. Again and again I learn how much peace and joy increase when I’m walking closely with God, and again and again I forget and let that relationship be neglected.

Hunger

Hungering after God is very different than hungering physically (after food).

I had a low-calorie day on Monday. I do that sometimes to either make up for some high calorie days or to try to trick my body into moving past a plateau in my weight-loss. It was a struggle on Monday, as it usually is, because the less I eat, the more I crave food! When I don’t eat, I get HUNGRY.

Besides physical hunger, there’s another kind. But hungering after God is not the same. It isn’t triggered as much by distance from God. When you haven’t read your Bible recently, you don’t have increasing hunger pangs as the days pass. Actually, you have fewer. Unlike physical hunger, this kind of hunger seems to decrease when you abstain. In fact, you have more hunger pangs when you’re consuming the spiritual things that you hunger after.

When you’re praying every day, you long for more time – more closeness – more of God. The hunger is greatest when you’re indulging, rather than when abstaining.

Don’t Eat Till You’re Hungry

It’s a shame how I sabotage my relationship with God sometimes by saying “I don’t feel like… (fill in the blank).”  Reading my Bible. Praying. Basically, I’m saying, “I’m not hungry right now.” I forget what I’ve learned over and over through the years – which is that often the hunger isn’t there until I start eating.

Don’t eat until you feel hungry may work for your body, but it won’t work for your spirit. So I guess I just want to encourage myself and others to remember. (And believe me, sometimes remembering requires a lot of effort.)

There are so many reasons to keep up your close relationship with your Lord. First and foremost, he loves you, and he longs to have you close. Secondly, when you’re faithful, blessings come. Third, peace and comfort and joy come from that close walk with God.

There are many things that can come between us and the Lord. Distractions, responsibilities… lack of hunger. Don’t let them. Force yourself to remember, and enjoy the benefits of that loving relationship. The hunger will come, but don’t wait for it. Don’t wait to “feel like it.”