Letting Go of Our Children+Killing the Sparrow

It’s true. I am trying to kill the sparrow who has been bombing our house day and night now for 3 weeks.

He woke me up again this morning at 5:45, a little ahead of schedule. I am not proud of my trap--- fly paper hung on his prime window so that he gets entangled and we can then send him on to bird heaven. (Even this measure took 3 people. All our windows are high above ground, on a slope. I climbed a tall ladder while someone held the ladder steady, while someone unrolled the fly paper. ) 

This same week I hugged my 23 year old son goodbye as he boarded a tiny fishing boat for a 1000 mile journey out in some of the wildest waters on earth. 

 He is headed to fish for red salmon in Bristol Bay. One thousand miles of North Pacific ocean, along the furthest reaches of our country in a 32 foot boat, the largest boat allowed in that fishery. Sailing the roughest,  furthest seas in a bathtub.

My daughter, too, is fishing in Bristol Bay, the largest and craziest salmon run in the world. She has crewed for a month each summer on a boat so small you can hardly turn around, with three men, not family.

(Scott Dickerson: photo)

When we let our children go out into the world, this is what we imagine: 

Whether they go out on the sea or into the fields or onto the rocketing freeways---we all know the cost of letting go. The heart-hitch, the throat-catch, the hands clenched, holding fast to their shadow, remembering fat baby legs, spaghetti hair in the high chair, their pudgy hands on our neck. . .. They don’t look behind when they leave. I didn’t either.


I thought of all this on a hike this week when I almost stepped on an eaglet. Not Calvin and Maddie, but another eaglet about the same age, just a month old. I was hiking the edges of my island and suddenly there he was, at my feet.

 Where did he come from and how was he there? Then I saw his “nest,” just a circle of dead grass 8 feet away from me, accessible to anything, any one. Not on a cliff, not in a tree, where most eagles build. So young, and he had already wandered out of his nest.

I saw him the day after my eldest two left home. I desperately wanted to pick up this eaglet who looked at me so keenly, without fear. He had never seen something like me. I could have killed him with love and fascination. I wanted so badly to take him home. I knew I couldn’t---but I also wanted to deliver him home safe to his circle of nest. But I couldn’t do that either. I have spent so much of my life parenting, I want to save every wild and needy creature I find.

But I can’t. I have to let go, knowing the eaglet may not make it back to his nest. I know, too, harm could come to my sons and daughter, despite my care and warnings. We protect our children as long as we can from failure, from hurt, from danger, but if we cannot let go when the time is right, who will protect them from us? It is time to get out of the way.

And if my prayers are answered, my children, when out in a massive storm, or exhausted from fishing around the clock— will not look to me for the calming of the seas or the strength to keep working. They will look to the One they are here to trust and to serve.

                                      (videohive.net)

And the sparrow? He is steering clear of my trap. 

                                  
I wonder, as he flies safely away from my dangerous window, is he believing what I have taught my children to believe, what I too believe in their absence?

“Behold, God is my salvation;
I will trust and not be afraid."


Indeed. For all of our children: We will trust and not be afraid.