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Freedom or bondage?

The hummingbird…I watch him.

I have waited all winter for his return.

There he is flying around in the garage of my barn with its ceiling so high. He found his way in there, but he just cannot find his way out.

My heart is so sad.

Those little lost hummers, I try to save them. I move feeders into the garage and hang them from the raised garage door that will lead to their freedom. Today, I am trying again.

After Steve and I first moved into the barn years ago, I stood in the dark trying to save that first tiny hummingbird. With a flashlight in my hand, I watched that tiny bird in a frenzied panic trying to find his freedom. He didn’t realize that both garage doors were up as well as a window up high in the barn.

That tiny bird just couldn’t see that freedom was within his reach.

After about thirty minutes of my valiant efforts to save him, he flew straight towards me and fell at my feet.

Oh, my heart was broken just seeing him lying there, totally exhausted and near death from his endeavors to escape the prison he had found himself — with freedom always just feet away.

I reached down and picked him up. So beautiful, all the colors he had been given upon his creation.

Taking him outside, I put him on a limb of the massive tree close to our house. Maybe he would live. I had done what I could.

Today, I am trying again.

Will he get tired and just give up? It makes me cry for that tiny bird. It is a new season. He just arrived from the winter. It makes my heart so sad that he might give up and not find his freedom.

Do we find ourselves held in the bondage of grief?

Where do we find our freedom from our grief when it has robbed us of our freedom to live again?

What brought us to this place of grief?

Grief came to visit me on that hot July morning in 2016 when my husband, Steve, suffered a massive heart attack.

The reality is — grief follows love — pure and simple.

Grief will take control, set up residence and stay as long as you allow it to.

Many try to describe the feeling of grief and loss. I find it impossible to put words to it all but saw this recently and realized it holds a lot of truth.

“There is a feeling of disbelief that comes over you, that takes over, and you kind of go through the motions. You do what you’re supposed to do, but in fact you’re not there at all.”

— Frederick Barthelme

Each one of us MUST grieve. It is part of the process to heal.

But beware! Grief is a Thief!

If we are not careful, there will not be just one loss when our husbands leave this earth, but the world will have lost another precious soul as well.

It will be us. You — and — me.

God is doing a new thing – whether we wanted this ‘thing’ or not.

“Behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.”
Isaiah 43:19 (ESV)

Like that trapped hummingbird…

You and I can become like that hummingbird I am trying to save today—just without the walls and ceiling of a barn that he ‘thinks’ holds him in.

We can be bound in our grief with absolutely no prison bars – just the grief we have allowed to control our hearts, our lives.

Our family walks with us in our grief in the loss of our husbands, maybe their dad, their beloved son, a sibling or their friend.

Will they have to lose us as well?

It changes us. We are not the same – will never be the same. There are times I am totally unrecognizable to even myself with this loss I carry.

What do my children see — my most wonderful friends who have walked along side me and have known me for so long? Do they grieve and miss the ‘old me’– as well as the relationship that was theirs with Steve?

When grief does not allow us to see the NEW THING God is bringing to our life, then like that hummingbird, we have become imprisoned with freedom just a prayer of surrender away.

We must surrender our grief to find our freedom.

Oh, how do we surrender this grief, this terrible missing?

We show up, and we let God do the rest.

Please never forget

How brave it is

To continue to show up

In a story that looks so different

Than what you thought it’d be.

Liz Newman

Dear Heavenly Father, please help us to not become casualties of our grief. Give us the strength to show up every day knowing that one day we will lay this grief down at Your feet and never feel it again. What a wonderful day that will be. Amen