by Angie Mack Creative, May 23, 2024

I walked into my music studio early the other morning and heard a tiny thud. A bird had flown into my front window and landed on my porch.

At first, I wanted to rush out and perform some sort of animal rescue. I have a big heart and don’t like to see anyone or anything suffering. Sometime last year, I watched an injured crow laying in the middle of my road caw-cawing to its mate in a nearby tree. It was breaking my heart. I knew that at any moment a car would be driving by, and their relationship would tragically be over.

Death. Not a fan. Suffering. Not a fan. But who am I to argue with the eternal circle of life?

One other early morning, I heard a knock on my door. A friend so stricken with grief that she was unrecognizable to me felt compelled to find solace at the “Grafton House of Blues”. Her son recently passed away. When I used that language, she firmly exhorted me to not mince words and to reference the graphic way in which he died. As difficult as it was, I honored her wishes.

“Mom, do you know the song ‘Let it Be’?”

This mother and son seemed to have a special, close and playful relationship. “Gosh, I don’t know if I do,” joked this woman raised in the Beatles era.

She looked at me with desperate eyes. “Will you play ‘Let it Be’ for me on the piano?” And so, I invited her to sit next to me on the piano bench. I started to play and sing, encouraging her to sing along with my left arm wrapping around her during the chorus. After several minutes of highly emotional singing, she began to spontaneously move about my music studio and bang on my congas. She moved toward my front window, raised her arms as she danced and sang loudly. I witnessed momentary relief. Her grief had been so heavy. I was glad that I could be with her in those hours. It was a holy moment.

Another time last summer, I was sitting by a swimming pool and a bird flew into a large window nearby. A kindergarten-aged boy was in distress. “Mom! That bird is hurt!” I have to admit, I was worried about the bird as well.

The mother’s nonchalant and almost flippant answer to her son absolutely floored and offended me at the time. “Don’t worry, honey. That bird will be fine. He just needs to SHAKE IT OFF.”

I overheard this thinking, “Shake it off? A bird is about to die, and she quotes a Taylor Swift song and keeps sipping on her beverage in a big floppy hat reclined? What an uncaring answer!” However, her tone was so utterly confident that it gave me a little hope. And by God, if that bird didn’t lay still for a few minutes, shake it off and fly away.

Back to the injured bird the other morning on my porch. As counterintuitive as it was to my nature, I decided to try the “Let it Be” and “Shake it Off” theories and trust the Divine outcome.

Rushing in to rescue isn’t always the best answer. I am learning more and more that waiting and trusting is sometimes the best answer.

As I waited for the bird on my porch, I thought about some of the people that I love. I prayed.

And wouldn’t you know………it flew away.