This is a time of transition, and with that a time of limitation. Limitation that I have hard time accepting – it feels so wrong at this mature time of my life. This should be and is a time of harvesting in so many other ways – so why this particular drawback?
My guidance tells me it’s only for a while, it’s a challenge meant to make me grow into a bigger energy, bigger service, bigger life. But even knowing it, the frustration is intense! So I decide to walk it off a bit.
I live in an apartment on 2nd floor and as I open the door and step over the threshold, I see there‘s a tiny bird flying above and around the staircase, obviously frustrated because it cannot find its way out. The main entrance to the house, that door is open and that’s how the bird flew in, and then it flew up of course, that’s what birds do… But somehow it doesn’t understand that in order to get out it needs to fly all the way down again.
So here’s this bird, flying really fast just below the high ceiling, then circling down to the window then back up… and I can see how it just continues doing this. “You need help! But how am I going to help you out??” I say to it, really worried.
I wish it would stop flying and sit by that window. Which by the way is protected by a railing and cannot be opened anyway. But perhaps, I could somehow catch it there? Not that I’ve ever tried to catch a bird…
Miraculously, as if it understands, or maybe just trying to escape from me now, the bird flies in between the bars of the railing and starts jumping back and forth, within the small space between the window and the railing, too narrow for it to take off again. This is my chance!
I speak calming words to it but it doesn’t seem to have any effect, the bird continues moving back and forth, now also trying to avoid my hands. But I am determined. Somehow, I don’t even recall how, everything happens so fast!… But now it’s in my hands.
The bird keeps trying to get out of the cage created by my hands, and I keep begging it “Please, just let me do it, I will help you, just let me do it…”. I have to keep my hands around it really tight so it doesn’t get away, because that would just take it back to the futile circling below the ceiling. I have to be firm and I’m also afraid of breaking something in this tiny, delicate body…
With its life in my hands I’m running down the staircase as fast as I can, until I finally cross the threshold there, but as I open my hands and release this beautiful, little being there is a moment of uncertainty: “Will it fly at all?”
Oh but fly it does, and not just to the next house or tree. It flies higher and higher and higher, into the sky, until I can no longer see it.
There are tears in my eyes, a smile on my face and my heart is overflowing with gratitude. I’m happy for the bird, and amazed at the gift this little angel brought to me. Because, see what happened:
To begin with, this curious creature must have found our backyard and then it wanted to explore the space behind the open door. It didn’t know that it was too small a space for a bird.
I imagine that it couldn’t understand what was happening and why it couldn’t find its way out. And even less why it was caught in an even smaller space between the railing and the window. And finally, completely stuck between a pair of human hands!
And yet, somehow, it was through this utmost frightening limitation that it got released. Into the endless freedom of the skies where it belongs, and where it can choose its ways the way a bird is meant to.
This is what my life is about now, I see that. Moving me through shrinking spaces so that I can be released into the freedom of a bigger sky.
This is not a mistake and it is not the ending. This is a new beginning. This is me – and you, perhaps – crossing the threshold!
PS: If you want to learn how to find Joy even in the midst of limitation, download the Finding Joy e-book here
PPS: The bird pictures above are from not mine and they do not stem from the episode above. I didn’t have the time, the mind nor the intention of taking pictures…
This excerpt of the forthcoming book, Awakening to Joyful Living is published here with permission. All Rights Reserved.