Bird watching (while eating M&Ms)

It was just past siesta time, a glorious time in our day when both boys rest and I succumb to a twenty minute nap.  I was standing in the kitchen, snacking on my post-siesta M&Ms (just how this 5 pound bag managed to find its way into my house and take up residency in my pantry is a mystery to me, considering my great weakness for small, crunchy chocolate objects) when I looked out my kitchen window and spotted the tiniest of birds munching on some food from the bird feeder that is perched on our window.  Not four feet away, our eyes met.  I paused, anticipating the bird to quickly flee.  It didn't.  Continuing to watch me, the bird took several more mouthfuls before it turned its back on me and gave itself fully to its seedy feast.   

Nothing extraordinary about this interaction, really.  Many birds frequent our feeder throughout the day so I am sure they are accustomed to the humans who dwell on the other side of the glass.  Yet I was struck by the naive trust that this particular bird had in me, a grown human 200 times its size.  Although I wouldn't, I had the capability to cause irreparable harm to this tiny creature.  The bird, however, seemed ignorant of this fact or just chose to ignore it and carried on with its business.  Indeed, by allowing me to share these solitary moments of its life it was offering me a sort of gift.  Recognizing this I exercised extreme caution, not wanting to make any sudden movement that would scare the bird, injure it in some way, cause it to lose its trust in me.

This little encounter with the bird got me thinking:  What if we recognized the naive trust that our beloved sons and daughters exercise in us, despite the extreme power we have to harm their little psyches?  And acknowledging this, what if we cherished the moments we spend with our kids as the gifts that they are, doing everything in our power not to scare them, injure them, or cause them to lose that trust, but rather doing our prayerful best to build them up, love them, and cause their trust in us to be founded?  Because--and more and more the reality of this is sinking in--the time we have with our kids is brief, and our window of opportunity to influence them--either positively or negatively--is closing quickly. 

Obviously, we all love our children and would never intentionally hurt them, yet through carelessness, impatience, negligence and sin we undeniably do.  I wonder if some of those instances in which our children get hurt by us could have been avoided had we as parents simply paused for a second, held our breath, taken a mental snapshot of whatever scenario had led to that point and viewed it with eyes scanning for a gift, a blessing.  Because if we do this, if we look for the beautiful, the rare, the precious in our kids, we will certainly find it, even in those moments where it is not expected.  Children are a blessing from the Lord.  Let's treasure every moment with them, even the difficult ones, as such.