Fly Away Home

I was asked this morning, “Do you think everybody has to understand what you’re going through in order to love you?”

And this got me thinking.

All of my life I have really been alone. My family did not understand me. I did not feel accepted by them at all. When I was 13, I found out that I was a “mistake” and that I was almost not even born.

I shared a part of the white bird story with my mother and the person I had been talking to earlier this morning that I did not write about. I have shared about the significance about the white birds quite a bit this past week. But there was something that I did not share about that moment. In that moment, when I looked up at the white bird flying across the lake, I had been reading about the enemy’s strongholds.

I have lived for most of my life pretending that the things I was going through were not happening. When the bad memories come back, I am usually overcome with shame and guilt. That’s when the first set of lies come into my mind… “You’re not good enough,” “You’re stupid,” “This is all of your fault.” The first stronghold I have been dealing with is that shame and guilt.

The second stronghold is the one that has been most apparent in my life recently, which is the complete opposite: pride. I have overcome so much in my life and when I start to think about everything I’ve overcome, I’m overwhelmed with a sense of pride. “I did it all by myself.” “I must be one of the strongest people.” And that is where I think all of this started.  I began to think that I had to be more than God already has made me to be. It was in my quest for all of the answers to why my mind was the way it was, why the things that happened occurred, and why the things of this world are the way they are that I lost sight of who I really am and that I do not have to know everything. I have joked about building time machines and other devices and those were jokes. But the truth is I do understand physics, mathematics and engineering. But I also have been deeply hurt and God is helping me through this in a way that nobody else can.

I really do have the intense memories I do. I really could not control my spasms and stuttering. But I spent all this time trying to get people to believe what I was going through and when I gave that up and went back to the source, God, is when the physical symptoms and the anxiety stopped. That is when I started to see the white birds and the yellow butterflies.

I know what has happened in my life and I know what I experience. I know what I remember. Nobody can go into my mind and see what I see. Others will not understand how God uses nature to help me through this healing process. Because they do not have to understand.

I watched the Fly Away Home video that I posted about 5 times yesterday. I have watched that movie so many times yet I never realized the great significance and symbolism in that movie until yesterday. I do not even know if the people who created the film meant what I am going to say.

The beginning of the movie starts in the dark. The girl and her mother are talking and her mother gets distracted and the next second you know, there are headlights and the car is in a million shattered pieces.

When we get distracted from what God call us to do, from who we are, from the path that God has planned for us, and we do not see the light of God, we tend to crash and our live can feel like a million little shattered pieces.

The girl wakes up in the hospital and she sees her father. She realizes that her mother has passed away and then she moves to her father’s house. She goes to live with her father and she has to deal with the loss of her mother as well as her new home with the father she did not really know that well.

When God calls us to do something, it may be in our time of healing and it may be out of our comfort zone. It may be in a place where we feel absolutely the least comfortable.

At her father’s farm, she watches these people who want to get rid of the trees. They want to damage the environment and in doing so, they create danger for the birds on the farm.

Sometimes we lose sight of God’s creation. This is something we are currently doing to our world today. Our forests are quickly becoming smaller and are now known as “conservation” parks, whereas they used to be a huge part of the world, not just something that needed to be conserved. Animals as well are becoming endangered and in danger of becoming extinct.

The girl takes care of these eggs and she helps them to grow up. She becomes one of them, so much so that they look to her as a mother. They follow her everywhere. She is literally the only person or thing that these birds will follow.

The same thing happens in our lives with Christ. We can get distracted by the stuff of this world- the fame, the want to know everything, to understand anything, etc. And people try to find comfort in alcohol, drugs, money, you name it. But the only thing that gives us the freedom to fly in our lives is following God.

The girl and her father create this plan to help teach the geese to fly from their father’s farm South because they will not be safe where they are. Everybody who they talk to thinks they are absolutely out of their mind.

Sometimes God calls us to do absolutely crazy things that nobody else could even understand. Noah and the ark ring a bell? Everybody else around Noah probably thought he was crazy but he was doing what God called him to do.

Many of the scenes of them finally flying in the sky after months of preparation are of all of these places that we see in our world: they fly over cities, over farms, over various different places. People all over these various places look up and feel excitement as they watch these birds and the girl and her father helping them to fly.

The same goes for being a witness to God. People see what God is doing in our lives and hopefully they feel excitement. And they look up to God. Not to us, but to God. They see us soaring in the sky, above the storms, above the people shooting at us because they think we’re something we’re not (there were some people shooting at the geese). When we are a witness to God, it is never about us. It is about shining God’s light in our world.

The father and the girl touch down due to an accident with her father’s “bird plane.” They bump into this woman who invites them into her house to stay the night.

To me, this woman represents the people in our lives who are in our lives but for a moment, but they are necessary to come into our lives in order for us to continue our journey. It does not matter who they are or how long they stay in our lives, but they make a profound impact.

The scene that makes the most sense to me right now and as I watched this clip yesterday is the father waiting. He stands there waiting. And as he and this crowd of people who are fighting with each other over whether to tear down the trees and get rid of the environment for the geese, he just waits there.

This is how I believe God is waiting for all of us. In the chaos that our world is, with the constant arguing over politics, the environment, etc, we lose sight of the one who really holds our world together. As the girl soars to her final destination to meet her father, the battle over the trees is won and the geese find their environment as well. In this, I find the meaning that we are supposed to take care of this earth as much as we can until God finally calls us home. And until then, we are called to soar over the storms in our lives, whether it’s financial hardship, disabilities, losses, or just other strongholds.

I apologize for this really long post. I have watched this movie over and over again, but all of this came together right now as I am writing this.

I pray that whoever God wants to read this will read it and that those who do read it join with me to shine God’s light in our world in a way that has never been seen before. Share the unconditional love that Christ showed to all people on the cross. This goes for every single human being on this earth. I do not care who you are, where you’ve been, what you’ve done or not done… We need more love in this world.

This earth is not our real home. And until we "fly away home," we need to take care of each other and bless each other in what we say and do to each other, but also to ourselves and all of God's creation.

Amen.