To Seek or Hide...this is the question

This evening we prepare to attend our daughter’s last middle school band concert. It will be a bittersweet evening. Joy for the high school years to come and sadness for the junior high experiences ending. As an adult looking back, I can honestly say the best is yet to come. Thankfully, my daughter’s four years of junior high (we have a 5th – 8th grade junior high) were far more positive and memorable than mine.

The good news, my not so wonderful years of junior high and poor publicity at the high school the year before I was to attend opened doors for me to transfer to Bishop Cunningham Jr. /Sr. High School, a private school in Oswego. Here I met my forever friends, ones to whom I still have contact and consider blessings in my life. Therefore, the character building years of junior high strengthened me for the joyous years of high school. I pray our daughter will have a similar, if not better takeaway in a couple weeks.

This afternoon I noticed this docile and innocent kitty perched in the bird feeder. I watched the interaction between the birds and their intruder. The cat lay in the shade of the feeder and so still, you might not realize he was there.                            

A couple times a mourning dove landed on the roof above his head. He didn’t make any quick movements or attack before it was time. Instead, the cat waited. It watched and seemed to plan the exact moment it would swat its paw to the roof in hopes of some truly “mourning” dove lunch. I am happy to report that in spite of the cat’s cunningness and agility to jump into the feeder, it left as hungry as it arrived. Each bird scattered before the paw made contact. Go birds!

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Why do I share this with you? How does it relate to my daughter’s last junior high band concert? My answer, this is an example of life. As our eighth graders prepare to say good-bye to their middle school teachers and surroundings, they have choices to make. Either they can spend their summer perched in the feeder of life waiting for it to happen or they can make the necessary leap to new beginnings.

I pray our children avoid the darkness and hiding as they look to their future. I pray they are like the birds still eating from the neighboring feeders and walking about the roof, fearless and ready to receive the blessings in front of them. The cats theory might have seemed foolproof yet when put into action, he failed. Pray our children don’t fail but walk in the Light and achieve the goals they set without fear like the bird on the feeder. He left with a full belly, and probably laughing at the silly cat creature sitting in the feeder.

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Are you the cat or the bird? Why?