The Annoying Bird

This morning– as in just a few moments ago– I was laying peacefully in my bed and planning to stay there for awhile longer. I was very sick on Friday and had an extremely busy weekend. I thought I’d enjoy sleeping in a bit. In fact, I wasn’t even going to write this morning.

Until that irritating bird started singing.

I don’t really think I can even call it singing. It was chattering in some weird, very un-song like way, changing its pitch and sounds, without any seeming regularity to its noise. Yes, I called it noise.

You see, this annoying bird had also awakened me at 1 am — 1 am!!– with this same chatter. No wonder I was tired when I woke up this morning.

Now, at this point, you may think I am going to proceed to share just how wonderful this creature is and why we need to appreciate it.

I’m not.

That bird is annoying and there is just no getting around it.

But there it is. Outside my window, chattering its heart out. What can I do?

Nothing. There is absolutely nothing I can do.

It reminds me of some of those difficult people I talked about the other day. The bird reminded me that there is not usually a thing we can do to remove the difficult people from our life. We work with them, we go to church with them, and sometimes they are in our family.

Or lets take it a step further. Sometimes it is just a situation we can’t change. A terrible job. A lousy teacher. We are stuck and can’t figure a way out of this irritating situation. There is just nothing we can do.

And, so, it comes down to dealing with it. No, let’s not say that. Let’s say this: It comes down to letting those people and situations help us grow spiritually instead of hindering our growth. And that is all about our attitude, isn’t it? And we do get to choose that.

So this post is what came rushing into my mind when the bird would not stop chattering…when I wasn’t even planning on writing. Maybe God’s trying to teach me something about accepting situations and growing from them instead of pushing back and struggling so much through them??