Bird.

(via Pinterest)

Today more than ever, the title of this blog makes complete sense to me. When I was trying to come up with a name, I just made a list of every random word that seemed to have a connection to me and the impact I wanted to have. I wrote down everything from "haven" to "mama," and then I made a second list of word combinations that seemed to work. The main reason this one won out was because my friend liked it, and nothing with the same name came up on my Google search. Shows a lot of deep thought, huh? But today, today it finds meaning, even beyond what I scrawled out on that one page.

Today I feel as small as a tiny bird on a giant painted landscape. You know the kind I mean. The out-of-place squiggle of black paint on a cloudy colorful sky. Just looking at it, you wonder if it was just a small mistake that the artist covered up. Yes, I feel like a mistake. Some crinkled piece of paper that could have been ... but just didn't make the cut, and so was deposited into the trashcan posthaste. I feel like the baby bird that hasn't learned to fly yet, thinking to myself, "I'm a bird, for crying out loud. What good does a bird do if it can't fly?" So I reason that I'm probably just broken. A broken bird, with no claim to fame.

You see, when you get to that point; that dark area of your life when you feel like you have absolutely nothing to offer the world, you think a lot about what the world actually needs. What you need. And you start to wish that someone, who had been through pain and sorrow, and who overcame it, would come alongside you; would help bring you to your feet. Maybe not even knowing what they are doing; how they are helping you. I can tell you for sure, sometimes it doesn't take much.

A smile on a lonely day.

Someone asking how you are, and genuinely meaning it, to the point that when you fake a smile and say you're fine, they don't listen to you. They grab your hands and look into your eyes and tell you that they know for a fact you are not. Because honestly it can be so. hard. to be fine all the time.

Maybe an encouraging email, text message, phone call, or even a blog post? I, for one, have been impossibly encouraged countless times by women who dare write, it seems, with their very blood and being, with the hope that His name might be praised. And I hold onto a shard of this same dream ... the glass penetrating my skin ... me, so very broken, and I clench it all the tighter, because I know that if it doesn't hurt, what good is it? Because we cannot encourage the breaking without being broken ourselves. And the ones that make the most impact are those that break pieces of their own heart so that others might be whole. You will not hear me climbing 'the storied tower' to somehow minister to the brokenhearted. Because I have been there, felt that, and I've cried those tears.

So what good does that flightless bird do? You probably already guessed. The broken bird sings. It sings not when the hour of tears has passed ... but through the tears themselves. Because when we hear the song of someone, and we know what they are going through; we hear the crack and the tremor in their voice ... we stop and listen closely. We hear them praising their King in the very height of their pain, and something about that song can inspire us more than any clear and confident voice from someone who's soaring.

This is it, then. My broken birdsong.