At my late breakfast on the porch, sharing cantaloupe with Penelope. She begs so pitifully and looks at me with those puppy dog eyes like she’s a starving homeless puppy, stranded on the interstate in the pouring rain, dodging speeding freight trucks. I just can’t say no to that face.

The sky was a beautiful marbled vanilla this morning. If I stared intently at the sky, I could see faint outlines of different colors of gray clouds and an occasional glimpse of blue sky when the clouds thinned out. Dreary day but in a beautiful way. The birds are around the feeders. A bright crimson cardinal is sitting in the gardenia bush, singing a loud love song to his mate. Who knows, he might be singing to me! The squirrels are playing tag, except for Fatty. He is climbing the bird feeder poles, sampling the seeds in each one. I swear, one day I’m going to get him with a pellet gun!

The yard was deathly quiet for a little while, no yard symphony music, and suddenly I heard the brask honking of a V formation of Canadian geese, winging their way on their migratory journey. I went out in the yard looking for them but never saw them. They were either too high or hidden by low clouds. Heard their loud honking fade into the distance. One of my friends in Minnesota calls them “honkers.” After the honkers flew by it was quiet and then I heard some crows loudly and angrily cawing. Another look at the sky, I see three jet black crows chasing a hawk. The hawk just kept flying on his way, ignoring the jabs and pokes from the crows. They kept cawing at him till they were out of my site. Got quiet again after all the excitement wore off.

A brown thrasher came in my yard this afternoon. Had to get a good look cause they look a lot like a wood thrush. The thrashers have yellow eyes and a long curved bill. So pretty in their fall colored rusty red coats, their wings tipped black and white like saddle oxfords, their white breasts streaked with black lines of feathers. They have long tail feathers. Such handsome creatures. They earned their name from the thrashing around sounds they make scratching the ground looking for insects. They sound like a grown man walking when they scratch around in the leaves.

The vanilla sky with her overcast thick clouds kept the sun hidden all day. Middle afternoon some blue sky peeked through the thick clouds that obscured the sun. Mother Nature is getting her palette ready to paint a glorious sunset but the sun herself is already snuggled up cozy in her vanilla cloud covers. Mother Nature brushed the horizon a light turquoise, blended it into the vanilla sky, and then retired her brushes for the night. The sun slipped unseen down the horizon and turned the day’s light off. Father Sky was too busy looking for the moon and stars in their cloud covers to kiss Miss Sun goodnight. She was sung to sleep by the long wails and woo woos of a slowly moving freight train. I love to hear the train at dusk, just has a lonesome winsome sound.

I love to watch the flights of the birds. Some fly like the undulations of the waves in the ocean, some fly fast and straight, other dance in the air like ballerinas, some dive bomb to the tree limbs. Roy T. Bennet said, “If you want to fly, you have to give up what weighs you down.” You watch a bird in its beautiful flight and you’ll see how weightless they appear.

I think we can all fly. We just need to get rid of our past experiences that way us down and clip our wings. We have to let go to things that limit our flight, free ourselves from low self-belief, low self confidence. Be brave and step off the branch and fly, strive to reach your full potential. We determine how life’s failure affects us. We can learn from our mistakes or let them add weight to our wings. The experiences we have in life can help us fly or anchor us to the ground. We are the only ones who decided how we fly and how far our flight takes us.

Trust in the Lord and you can soar on eagle wings. God is always standing by to catch us till we learn to fly on our own!

“God gives us the ability to run when all our strength is gone. He even gives us the ability to soar against all the gusts of wind — the circumstances of life that seem to make it impossible to keep moving forward.” — Jeff Syverson