Happy Birding.

"Mom! Come outside and listen! It sounds beautiful out this morning!" 

were the words of my youngest before school this week.

She was so right.  

It sounded absolutely beautiful.

The sun was shining. Snow was melting and the birds were so happy

that their happiness spilled over onto us with their singing.

Do you know what made me happiest?

That she heard it.

That my girl's ears were open enough to notice and to fully completely delight in the sounds

so much that she wanted me to hear it too.

Oh, my friends, that is why I share my pictures and stories 

about birds,

about heart-shaped rocks,

about sunsets,

about dewdrops on blades of grass,

about sunshine on barbed wire fences

about my faith.

Because I want you

to see it and hear it too.

I want you to see 

the sacred,

the beautiful,

the holy,

the breathtaking

in everyday

ordinary

life.

It is May.

May is the month of migration and also of nest building.

It is the month that I anticipate the arrival of my favorite blue birds:

the Lazuli Bunting and the more rare Indigo Bunting.

So you will see me sharing my pictures on facebook, Instagram, and right here,

as I get so crazy happy about these birds.

I hope that some of that happy spills over into your life too!

Fill your feeders with sunflower seeds and suet

and bring them into your yard and watch your kids get excited about them too!

I'd love to see and hear about the birds you see too!

Happy Birding!

"If you get bored with birds, you get bored with life."

Roger Tory Peterson

Spring. Oh My Heart.

Meadowlarks are singing.

Morning sunshine makes everything golden.

There is a faint hint of green whispering its presence from the ground.

Mama cows look with suspicion upon me walking 

even though I'm on the other side of the creek and the fence.

My heart swells.

Oh. My. Heart.

It is full.  It aches with fullness.

Spring.

Tomorrow is the first day on the calendar.

But there are no hard lines to seasons.

They blur together as one fades into the next.

The sounds of the birds

at each season change

create a longing in my heart.

I wrote of it after hearing the first meadowlarks' songs

earlier this week.

Meadowlarks

I hear you

Even though I do not see you yet

You stir in me

a longing

for innocence

for fascination

for belief in wonderful magical things

for deep unfailing love

for sunshine warming the cold corners of my heart

for eight years old.

Surely

you sing of heavenly lands

You sing of the place

my soul longs for

You sing

of 

coming home

Gather my pieces all together here, Lord,

in

the song

of the

meadowlarks.

The View From The Hayfield

This one of for Aunt Jean.

Pictures of home in the spring.

The baby calves are bawling

and the mama cows are highly suspicious of me

because I am walking instead of driving the cake pickup.

The meadowlarks and robins are singing

and the creek is even running with a little waterfall.

It's been dry the past two springs.

It really is the perfect time for "birding".

There are no leaves, so they are easy to find.

No bugs and no tall weeds to navigate.

No ticks yet either.

Just look at who was keeping an eye on me

as I walked the fence line of the hay field.

Not just suspicious mama cows.

Creating a Place to Grow Wings

It's easy to get the winter blahs when there is no green.

However,

when there are no leaves,

I can see all the nests along the dry creek bed.

I found a few today

and I got to thinking

about how

they feel so

sacred to me.

It's a little home

that a bird made.

A bird.

And they hang on to these trees 

in the wind

the rain

the snow.

Not just any wind.

Prairie wind.

Monday this week we had 70 mile an hour gusts.

All these little nests are still there.

And I thought about how a nest is a home.

A place for

love,

nurturing,

nourishing,

protection,

wing-growing.

I thought about how I want

to be intentional

about creating my house to be a sacred place,

no matter how little and cramped it may be,

no matter how messy it might get at times.

But asking myself,

How can I make this a sacred wing-growing home?

How can I make it a place 

of love, nurture, nourishment, protection, faith building, wing-growing?

A safe house,

yet a growing house...

Somehow,

looking at the tiny little nests

built on faith,

I began to see

my little nest

and the work

that I do there

with different eyes

today.

The Robin Story

My Aunt Linda is living with Parkinson's Disease.

Her mom was my Grandma Marj.

Grandma Marj shared the love of bird-watching with each of us.

So, I am sending Aunt Linda my bird stories.

This morning I felt like I should share them publicly, as I mail them to her.

Some of you have read them or heard me speak of them.

They are deeply meaningful and so personal.

Yet, even though it feels so vulnerable to share, 

I believe they are meant to be shared.

This is one of those stories

that is a

"Know and Believe"

story.

Be encouraged.

In your mind.

In your heart.

In your spirit.

The Robin Story
It was May 3, 2008, in the midst of a spring blizzard on the South Dakota prairie.  I had come through a spring of cancellation after cancellation after cancellation for my business.  Canceling again and again the actions that I thought were necessary to see my dreams fulfilled.  My business was counting on these appointments that, due to weather, I had repeatedly cancelled from January to May.

At the same time, a childhood hobby of bird watching that had been shared with my Grandma Marj, had resurfaced.  Like I did as a child, I started to notice and cherish the birds I saw in my yard.  It had been a tender time with my grandma as a child.  For many years, it seemed to go dormant in my life, but that year, the seed of bird watching had sprouted again in my heart.  On the first day of the blizzard, May 1, 2008, I had taken some photographs of robins in the cottonwood tree in my yard.

Also at this time, I had begun to fill journal after journal with prayers and what seemed to me to be the Lord's tender and loving response.  Prayer had become a rich relational experience with the Lord.  A real relationship.  I seemed to finally be experiencing that Jesus is alive and I know Him and He knows me.  It was true.  Jesus was true.  I could have a relationship with Him now.  I did not have to wait until after this life to know Him.  This experience is one of those ways that I knew and know that He is:  after the repetition of cancellations I had made for the previous five months, I had just poured out my frustration to God on paper and this is what He seemed to answer...

My child, you have needed this time with Me.  Do you see the richness of your life?  The robins puffed up in the snow in your tree--can you buy something so beautiful or contain it as a pet?  No.  It's beauty is in it's freedom to live wildly according to My design.  And you get to see it in your front yard.  You have that richness all around you.  You do not have to possess it materially to have the blessing of that richness in your life.  As you take photographs, it is your recognition of those little blessings in the details that surround you right where you are.

In your hands, your captivity, your cage, My child, the robin would suffer and eventually die.  It would not be living as I designed it to live.  But in My hands it has the ability, even as a little bird, to survive, even a violent spring blizzard, and not only survive, but thrive.  In My hands.  Turn your hopes and dreams over from your hands to My hands, My child.  In your hands they will be limited and captive, but in Mine, they will be wild and free able to survive storms and thrive in the aftermath, and they will be beauty set free.  Whenever you see a robin, My child, let it remind you of the beauty, and freedom and thriving that exists in a life in My hands.

That is what was written in my journal that day.  It calmed my fretting and anxious heart.  I felt that I was held in the hand of God.  My cares had been cast upon Him, and He was caring for me.  I felt that He knew what my heart needed.  Even today, as I retype it, a fire of peaceful, cozy warm is ignited in my heart.  Just that, in my journal from my prayer time, would have been enough.
But then, about a week later, I am reading my favorite magazine.  Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion.  I come to a page with one of her paintings.  It is of a little boy standing holding his hands behind his back with a tree branch in them.  At his feet are three little robins and before his eye a robin in flight with a twig in its beak.  The painting is titled, "Little Robin".  "Oh, how sweet," I thought.  But what I saw next caused me to gasp and praise Him.  My heart was moved to worship when I read the quotes on the page.  The title was "Dream a Little Dream", and then five quotes about dreams. 

Here are two.

"So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable."  Christopher Reeve. 

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Martin Luther King, Jr.

Prior to writing in my journal in my prayer time, I had never associated robins with my dreams.  They were two separate things.  Yet, it seemed He taught me to trust Him in that prayer time with my hopes and dreams.  He taught me to let them go ~ that He should hold them, not me.  That giving my dreams to Him was His design for my life.  That hanging on too tightly to my vision for my life would suffocate His design.  I was thinking that it "had to be this way" for my hopes and dreams to happen.  But even though there had been storm after storm, He still held me and my hopes and dreams in His hand, and there, all of it was safe, and there they would not only survive, but flourish and thrive.  Just like He holds the robin in the storm, He holds me in my storms.  As I read the quotes on that page about dreams and I saw the painting of the robins on the same page, I felt like the Lord Himself had sent me a love letter for my heart.  You can choose to call all of this a coincidence, but I will choose to glorify Him, to give Him the credit, the glory, the honor, and the praise.  It seemed to be a confirmation to me personally.  Just a special little thing so that I would know.  That I may know that He is the Lord and there is no other.

Do you have a "That You May Know Story"?  If so, I encourage you to document it.  Write it in a journal.  Take a photograph that reminds you.  Paint or draw a picture.  Write a letter to your kids or grandkids so they may know your story.  Whatever you are inspired to do. 

If you do not have your story yet, pray for it.  Seek Him with all your heart and He will be found by you.  Believe this truth: Jeremiah 29:13-14 says, "And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.  I will be found by you says the LORD."  Begin seeking Him wholeheartedly.  He knows how you will know.

*

Photos and words property of Jodene Shaw.  

Do not copy, reprint or distribute without permission. Thank you.

Ospery On Snake River

Give me a camera

and I'm content.

A camera while I'm surrounded by birds . . .

well, it's going to be a challenge

to remove me from the situation!

Last month,

we were in Grand Teton National Park.

Ducks, geese, eagles, ospery.

Nests everywhere.

Husband and son fish on the Snake River.

My two girls and I camp on the side.

Girls with a little fish net for minnows.

Me with a camera.

Ducks & "adolescent" ducklings

floating 3 feet in front of me.

I had the camera on wrong setting

so I scrambled for a few shots.

Ospery swooping over the river.

I told my girls to keep an eye on him

because he was looking for fish to eat.

After an hour of them catching minnows,

me telling Erin to stay on the edge,

while I constantly was "bear aware" ~ looking over my shoulders,

here is what we saw . . .

{the photo quality is not great, but the experience was AMAZING}.

After the ospery patiently waited for the perfect timing

caught his fish and flew off,

a  young eagle swooped by and bullied him

into dropping his fish.

And then he went back to his tree to start all over again.

Me, being the "bird-nerd" that I am,

was out-of-my-skin excited to see something like that!

I decided I need some lessons though

on bird photography . . . or perhaps some new equipment!

{All photos owned and copyright 2011 Jodene Shaw.}

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