The Nest

Disclaimer: In this post, I may ramble a little bit, I may be weirdly metaphorical, and/or I may be in your face and stomping on your toes. Or I may just confuse you. I may say stuff that will make you go, “Well, duh,” because it’s something you’re already familiar with, but I’m articulating something that I’m experiencing for the first time or that’s clicked for me at a deeper level. Please humor me. I'm a writer. If the light bulb turns on for me, I want to communicate it in such a way that it will hopefully help other people see the light, too. :o) Maybe my cats can help me clean up after myself later. Phew.

“Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young -- a place near Your altar, O Lord Almighty, my King and my God.” (Psalm 84:3)

I’ve been thinking about “nests” and “feeding” lately, especially with my new church responsibilities and, well, there’s a nifty little visual aid outside my apartment now. Meet mama and daddy swallow.

Daddy swallow is the rugged one on the right who’s perching with one claw on a screw/nail above my kitchen window. Mama swallow slept in the nest until the eggs hatched and the baby swallows grew too big for her to stay in the nest. As you can see...

...they can be demanding little cheepers. At least, I hope the photo quality enables you to see how adorable they are with their little beaks wide open at even the slightest hint of mama swallow incoming with breakfast.

It’s really something how they instinctively open their mouths: “Aaaah! Incoming food!” I even saw a yellowjacket fly by the nest once, and the baby birds did the same thing: “Aaaah! Incoming food! I don’t know if it will sting my esophagus on the way down or if it’s healthy for me at all, but I’m hungry, and this food is buzzing straight at me!”

In John 21, Jesus told Peter to feed His sheep. In a nutshell, that’s basically what church leaders do for people. One of the worship pastors at my church basically said once that you have to be careful what you feed yourself, because that’s what you’ll feed your little ones. What if they’re thirsty? He said you don’t want to give them a drink of toilet water. No way. You need to give them clear, clean water.

Sometimes it helps to take a closer look at the water you’re drinking and the vessel you’re drinking from, literally and metaphorically. The other day, I wondered why my purified drinking water left a weird taste in my mouth. I took the lid off my thermos and saw that there was a paper towel soaking at the bottom. (gag)

Recently, I went through some of my old journal entries (from 1997-2000). Once the shock wore off from reading and remembering the type of crap that I used to scream at God, I read some of the stuff that one or two of my “mamas” in the Lord used to feed me. Now that I'm out of their “nests,” I can see that I wasn’t always fed good things. I believe that they loved me, their intentions were good, and they fed and cared for me the best way they knew how. But I didn’t have to swallow everything they tried to feed me. In my journal entries (for privacy’s sake, I won’t share specifics on this forum), I could see some good mixed in with the chaos. I could tell that God was peacefully feeding me Himself in the midst of the crazily confused environment that I lived in. Maybe there was a yellowjacket nest right next to mama’s nest, and in my demanding hunger, I devoured the harmful insect along with the nourishing worm.

OK, so I’m not a scientist -- maybe baby swallows really are supposed to eat yellowjackets. My point is that if the food or water is bad, I’m learning to spit it out. If I have my own swallows or sheep to feed, I have to be careful what I consume. I have to be careful to provide the best food and water that I can to whoever I’m responsible for feeding. Another thing I’m learning is that after eating bad food, well, I can expect a bad poop.

That’s another thing about nests and birds -- so much poop to clean up! (I’ve heard that it’s the same way with human children and that it involves diapers or something.) I think that’s part of life. When it’s time to eat, you eat, and when it’s time to poop, you poop. As you grow, hopefully you learn to eat better food that helps you grow healthy and strong. Hopefully, you avoid bad food. Hopefully, you’re in a nest where mama and daddy swallow are teaching you how to be a swallow who will leave the nest someday and go build your own nest and have your own baby swallows. Hopefully, mama and daddy swallow are teaching you how to fly.

The baby swallows are growing so fast! I think it’s only been two or three weeks since they’ve hatched, and they’re already stretching their wings and tumbling out of the nest. (I saw one on the ground the other day. It looked like daddy swallow was supervising and giving him a pep talk.) I think they’ll all fly away pretty soon. (sniff) Also, I did snap a miraculous swallow-pooping photo, but I’ll spare your eyes, reader. Incoming!