Well, it's official,Tommy left. I really didn’t want to see him go and yet I knew the day would eventually come...
I’ve been waiting to write this story for over five years now. I know it’ll probably sound a little crazy, but I’ve actually been dreading it. Not because of the writing part, but because when it came time to write, I knew it would mean Tommy was finally gone. It's a story that's been in the works for years and with each passing month, I'd anxiously wait to see if that month was going to be when I'd have my ending - I knew it couldn't be told until it could be told in its entirety. I tried a couple times to sit down to write the story of Tommy, only to be met with a stern "wait" from the Lord. So I waited, month after month, year after year, watching as Tommy flew from window sill to window sill, until finally one day, he didn't.
Just like that, after nearly four years of tapping on our window almost every single day, he was gone from sight. It was a gradual process. He came less and less to the window sill each day, and would instead come to the plant by the front door, chirping patiently until I came to feed him. After months of the same pattern, he began to chirp from a spot perched in a tree, a few feet from his place in front of the window. I’d hear him and even though I didn’t see him, I knew he was there, so I’d feed him. This pattern continued for the next month or so, until suddenly, I realized I could hear him singing from the tree line by our house but he no longer came to the window or to get his food. I knew it was his sound after years of being trained to hear it so clearly. And, the moment I realized that, was the moment I understood what God was doing and that it was finally time to pull the story of Tommy together.
Tommy, the little red cardinal, showed up at our house on June 22, 2019 and was here for four years. Each morning, he'd steadily tap at the bedroom window until I woke, follow me to the kitchen window beside the table where I worked on my computer every day, to the front door as I moved through the house and would finally land at the window by the chair where I sit to pray. There were only a handful of days in those first months that he wasn't consistently at one of the windows near me all throughout the day.
I paid close attention to Tommy and his patterns for a few reasons...first, because it was strange. It's not often that a bird comes to your window and follows you around the house throughout the day - for years at a time. Second, because cardinals have consistently shown up at times the Holy Spirit is speaking something significant to me. And third, because cardinals have always been something the Lord uses to speak to my Dad, so it's been a consistent topic of conversation between the two of us through the years.
After a few weeks, when it seemed that the little red cardinal was going to be a regular part of our lives, I decided he merited a name. So Tommy it was. At first, it was entertaining - he was so bright and ambitious. My youngest son, Jax, took a picture for me, documenting the first day he came. While I loved the sight of him at the window, when he flew away that day, I thought that was the last we'd see of our visitor and I was honestly okay with it. The next day, however, he returned, this time early in the morning, tapping at our bedroom window. Really early in the morning. And the tapping was actually more like a "flying full force, beak first into the window" kind of tap. It was a startling way to wake-up each day, but despite that, I found myself excited to see him through the glass. I certainly never would've called myself a bird person, but soon after God brought Tommy into my life, I quickly became a person that loved a certain little red cardinal. And I get it now, why God sent him to me, waking us up each day and following me everywhere I went…
It's been said about cardinals that they come in seasons of despair to show love or comfort and I think it's fair to say Tommy came at a really hard time in my life. It's a part of my story that's painful - an encounter that broke a pretty big piece of my spirit. It was one of those experiences where it felt like I could actually feel a piece of my heart breaking and falling to the floor. A time when the breath I took in just wasn't enough to fill my lungs and I was left gasping just to get the air I needed. I came home from a ministry trip overseas where the events that unfolded threw me into a state of despair, dazed, stunned and not really sure what to do or where to go. It caught me totally and completely off guard and everything I thought I knew went flying out of the window in one singular moment. The path I believed I would be walking for years to come was severed. Shattered and heart broken, I felt lost and found myself wandering in the wilderness for nearly four years.
It was an incredibly hard season in my life that didn’t look like anything I had ever experienced before, and I'm so incredibly grateful to my husband for holding my hand and walking beside me through it all. I soon discovered my only option was to cling to Jesus, picking up and moving only when the pillar of cloud by day and fire by night, moved. That time in the wilderness, shunned from all I had been a part of before, was a lonely time by the world’s standards, yet it was an incredibly rich and rewarding time by Heaven’s standards. And it was the time that I believe with everything in me that God stepped in, in a really unusual and creative way, by sending Tommy to my window to show me how much I was loved. And to remind me that the Holy Spirit was with me through it all. One morning at brunch, after sharing with some friends about Tommy, God confirmed what I was sensing when one of the girls said “you’re his true love." I understand now that I was never really lost, but that God had intentionally brought me to the wilderness so that He could take me through a necessary process of surrender - a training ground of sorts - and that He had actually been holding my hand the whole time. That maybe Tommy really was the Lord's way of showing me how much He loves me. And that God isn't going anywhere, just as Tommy stuck around until I was able to let the reality of God's truth sink in - He will always be there.
I’ve wondered, every so often, over the years when God would pull Tommy away. I had thoughts in my head as to what needed to happen in my life for that to occur, but I didn’t spend much time on those thoughts. Instead, I dug into what God had for me. Training in the wilderness through prayer, His Word, and in seeking His face. I cried, I laughed, I healed, and I grew. I had lost myself and didn’t even realize it, until the Lord pulled me out and brought me into a place where it was just He and I. Slowly, over the days and what became years, I reacquainted myself with my Father in Heaven, and through that, He began to show me once again, who I was. A version of me that was renewed from having spent time soaking in the new wine of the season and in the incredible presence and love of my Father.
The creativity of how God speaks to us never ceases to amaze me and His confirmation can come in so many unexpected ways. When we realize God is in everything, a whole new world is opened before our eyes. It’s all throughout Scripture...when we seek the Lord He will reveal hidden things. A reminder that He is with us through everything, we just have to look. And to know Him so deeply that when He does whisper, however it may look in each of our lives, that we will recognize that it’s Him. A friend had texted me a prophetic word early on in the wilderness, not knowing anything I had been walking through, telling me that one day I would “write one specific song for a season" and that the Lord said the word "despair." With the text, he sent a Scripture that was so specific to the situation that had thrown me into “despair" I knew, without a doubt, the Lord was using my friend to give me insight into what was to come.
Change is an odd thing and often, even when we find ourselves in places like the wilderness, when it's time to finally emerge, we struggle to step out. So many new songs are lost in the desert places, unwritten, because we're hesitant to leave what has become comfortable, even if the “comfortable” isn’t comfortable at all. And so, while my heart was sad that Tommy left, my spirit rejoiced in knowing that the Lord saw in me a state of readiness to step out of the wilderness, the place I had finally resigned myself to be, and into the changing season. It took a little red cardinal, sent by God to comfort me in my days of heartache and to open my eyes to what God was doing through the hardship. I’m so incredibly grateful for the wilderness and I’m even more grateful He gave me the courage to step out. I’m not sure what all that looks like, but I do know that I have a better understanding of what I look like. Because I now remember who I am in Christ.
So here it is...I believe that God sent a bird to sing a song in my season of despair until I could begin to do it myself.
And what I noticed was that I eventually began to write my song. It didn’t look the way a traditional song might look, but it looked more like me picking up the pieces and walking out a battle I never asked to be in. It looked like beginning to, once again, be who God created me to be, not who the enemy tried to say I was. Using the gifts or “song” that God gave me to sing. And to do it with the confidence that had been built in the presence of God in the wilderness.
Every so often I wonder if the enemy will ever let up and leave us alone. But I've realized that as long as we are pursuing the Lord, the enemy will continue to pursue us. Like David, whose heart was always chasing after the Lord, and Saul who was always chasing after David. And like Tommy, our cardinal - as long as he is pursuing his true love, he will always be defending against the seen or unseen enemy. The thing is, the enemy will try to keep us in a season of despair, so that our songs remain unwritten. That’s his best and only plan...he lies, divides, destroys and steals, and then he tells us to sit there...it's where we belong. But when we see the enemy as the author of lies that he is, then we know we don’t belong there. God created us to live outside of despair. He created us to live free, and to sing that song of freedom to a world in captivity.
A pastor once said to me "the Lord blesses what He breaks" and I believe that with all my heart, because I've lived it. I know the Lord let me break and I’m okay with that, because out of the breaking came a stronger version of me. It's the version the Lord has been waiting for me to find, that was always there, it had just gotten lost under some things that needed to be cleared away. And one of the blessings in the broken, came through a little red cardinal that the Lord sent to give me my song back. The impact it's had on me is really pretty significant...a little bright light in the midst of the darkness, Tommy was at my window for1,297 days without fail. From room to room, during the hard times, times of correction, in sorrow, laughter and joy.
People will let you down, but the faithfulness of God will always pull you through. Sometimes that faithfulness appears in the form of a small red bird that shows up at your window each day. Tapping gently to get your attention as if to say, look around, God is with you. Because no matter what, God is always there. From room to room, from city to city, from circumstance to circumstance. The more we know His heart and can recognize His voice, the greater peace we have in the dark times of life, the seasons of despair. He is always there. He will never leave you or forsake you. We can choose to live in despair inspired by the darkness of the world, one where it looks like things could never change. Or we can choose to live like it’s already been done by God and we’re just waiting to see it with our eyes. That’s the sound of a new song. When we can sing praise and give thanks to the Lord for that which we can’t see but know is there.
There are reasons and purpose behind seasons of despair, reasons we may likely never know or understand on this side of Heaven. But the Lord will use everything, not one moment will be wasted if we allow God to use it in our lives. The minute we surrender our will for His and allow Him to hold our hand as He walks us through the dark nights…that’s the moment the lyrics to our new song begin to appear on the pages before us. A song penned in the thick of the battle, through tear filled eyes, in sorrow and in joy. A new song that is at long last sung to the nation as our feet hit the other side of the wilderness trail.
The Lord knew the perfect time for Tommy to leave...the day I found my song.
"Oh sing to the LORD a new song, for he has done marvelous things!" - Psalm 98:1
"Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises!"
- Psalm 98:4
“And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ Then I said, ‘Here I am! Send me.’” - Isaiah 6:8
“And the Lord came and stood, calling as at other times, ‘Samuel! Samuel!’ And Samuel said, ‘Speak, for your servant hears.’” - 1 Samuel 3:10
“I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you.” - Psalm 32:8-9
“Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.” - Jeremiah 33:3
“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.” - John 14:16-17
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