It’s a sad reality. All relationships start with love and promise, but all too often we see them weaken, crumble, and finally fail. It’s too bad all relationships don’t go to the birds. I know that sounds strange, but read on.
Many years ago, when I was just a young boy, a small yellow bird hit our front door. When I looked outside, I saw its tiny unmoving body on our deck. I opened the door to see if it was just stunned, or worse, dead.
I was kneeling over it, when my mom joined me. “Michael, I think it may be dead. I heard the bang on the glass. It hit pretty hard.”
“Mom, should we bury it?”
“I’m not sure, Michael. When I first looked out, I saw another bird land beside it. It looked like it was trying to pick this one up. I think we should let nature take care of this. Let’s put it on the roof of the car and see what happens.”
We placed the unmoving, little bird on the roof of my dad’s car and went back into the house. From our living room window, we watched as the bird’s mate flew to its side, carefully gripped the back of the dead bird’s neck in its tiny beak, and with strength only love and devotion could provide, and lifted its mate in the air.
It carried the body from the car, across the street, over the meadow on the other side and into nearby trees. It flew only a few feet off the ground. Sometimes it got up to six feet high, then the weight of its companion would pull it lower again. Its struggle was great, but the desire not to be parted from its mate was greater.
Thirty-five years later, I stepped out of my home on a warm summer morning. I looked toward my next-door neighbor’s—we lived in attached townhouses—and noticed a single strand of a spider’s web strung from the bush by the corner of their townhouse to the wheel of one of their cars. I thought it was strange for a spider to spin such a web, especially just one tiny strand.
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