Some of my favorite gifts have been donkey paraphernalia.
Once I received a set of donkey facts for my birthday, I’ve kept that list in my important documents tab for some years now.
Recently on a particularly rough day a dear friend slipped something in my hand, it was a donkey. I drew strength from that wooden donkey effigy and in the weeks following I slipped that donkey in my pocket and would rub my hand over it when I needed a bit of reassurance. I place him on the bathroom counter next to a tiny Jesus and look at them each and every day.
On really hard days I take the donkey with me and leave Jesus to stand firm.
My love of donkeys began about the time my children were the age where they acted like donkeys. Donkey became a part of the Martin lexicon as noun, adjective and an adverb.
As I’ve aged and my children have as well I’ve come to love and appreciate donkeys for the beautiful creatures they are and it all harkens back to one day, this day, Palm Sunday.
That first Palm Sunday morning the King rode on a donkey into Jerusalem, a sign of coming peace. There were shouts of praise and accolades, knowing in less than a week’s time those same fickle folks would be shouting “Crucify Him!”
I think about that donkey from time to time, the one that had never been ridden, the one that fulfilled an over four century old prophecy, that baby donkey that wasn’t too far from his mama but was charged with the responsibility that would literally mark all future donkeys thereafter. I think about how he ushered in the single most significant event in all of history, in all of mankind, and in all of the world.
Did that singular donkey have any idea what his act of obedience and service would mean for all of humanity?
Do any of us donkeys for that matter?
Palm Sunday was just the beginning, the beginning of out with the old and in with the new, the beginning of a new way of healing, a new way of living and a new way of being.
Palm Sunday was the countdown to the completion of the work that began way back in the Garden. A setting right what our Mom, Eve and our Dad, Adam got so messed up. Palm Sunday was so much more than palm fronds and donkeys, Palm Sunday is the day humility wins, servant-hood prevails, and the evidence is put forth that the donkeys of this world really do make a difference.
“Ohhhh I know this one, but I can’t think of what it’s called. Shelton do you know?” Charlotte was thinking hard.
Shelton paused and affirmed what his sister had stated. He knew it too but couldn’t remember the name.
Almost simultaneously, “Shazam it!” And then the song faded and was gone.
I was walking alongside them when I stated a fact,
“I have Shazam for birds!”
Again simultaneously, they rolled their eyes and the older and darker of the unlikely and unbioligical twins, said
“We know mom. You remind us all the time and it’s not Shazam, it’s some other app, you just call it that.”
Shazam is an app that can hear a part of a song, identify it and let the listener know to whom and what they are listening to. The three Martins all have the app and use it with regularity to identify song titles and artists.
The Shazam for birds to which I was referring is an app that a couple of years ago a dear friend introduced me to. It was a hot summer afternoon, we were taking a popsicle break in the shade and the only sounds that could be heard were the birds.
The app has a real name I can never remember but it identifies birds based on their sounds. It highlights the bird as it sings. I was telling someone about it once and she said, “You have Shazam for birds!” I’ve called it that ever since.
There used to be a time when I couldn’t have cared less for birds, or their songs. I was apathetic towards the fowl of the earth, the class aves. Birds grossed me out. I didn’t love birds but like a lot of things in my life, times have changed for me. I see something in them I didn’t before.
I think that my new found bird-brained intel started long about three years ago when the very atmosphere of my life began to dramatically shift.
I was looking out the window and I saw a bird, the only bird I could identify. A “Robin Red Breast” the only bird possessing the power of time travel and nostalgia. Not really, they just made me feel that way.
I was about nine, it had been a tumultuous time. I was learning to navigate life with corrected vision. Swimming was my favorite pastime, I loved reading and writing stories. Kellie was my constant companion. My Mama’s sister had died the previous July and as to be expected Mama wasn’t okay, none of us were really I suppose. I had no way of knowing it then but things would be okay, never the same, but okay.
When Mama wasn’t at home she was working and while she worked Kellie and I stayed with our grandmother, Mam-Maw.
Mam-Maw loved birds and she loved nicknames.
If you were born Debbie you’d be dubbed “Bean”, born Brian you would earn the moniker “Tapsly” shortened to “Taps”, born Amy you’d be given the name, “Mamie.” A term of endearment that to this day I still carry and only the closest call me.
One warm spring day, much like this one, Mamie sat next to her Mam-maw, they swung in a porch swing. That’s what they did, Mamie and Mam-Maw they swung and they were mostly quiet. Perhaps Mam-maw was doing her own kind of brain dump as she processed in quiet the loss of her child and husband and who knows what else. Maybe the Alzheimer’s was taking its early hold.
Suddenly a Robin came into view. She sang and she flittered about, she tugged a fat juicy earthworm from the ground and she sang. Mam-Maw pointed a slightly crooked finger and whispered,
“Mame, that there is a Robin Red Breast and whenever I see one I think of you because they are like you. Unusual and unique.” Unusual had only three syllables when she said it rather than the standard four.
I studied the Robin and I committed her to memory, when I would see one I would be reminded of what Mam-Maw had said that day long about 1988.
She said I was unusual and unique. I held onto her declaration as I’ve navigated life, remembered her observations of me and the association she made with a bird.
I didn’t know it then and wouldn’t for quite some time, that the American Robin, like most everyone else in her world, had a nickname and that’s what she had taught me, and they are unique but that is contingent on the season they are in.
They are in actuality one of the most common birds in America.
They are typically the first birds of spring, so in that season they are rare until their other bird counterparts begin to make their appearances.
Robins flitter about on the ground, they are dumpy little fellas and gals, they are hearty eaters, kind of particular like, eating worms in the morning and fruits in afternoons and in the fall. They’ve got a bad habit of getting intoxicated from Honeysuckle berries in the spring.
The ladies like to nap.
I reviewed these bird-brained characteristics and I chuckled…forty plus years ago my Mam-maw looked into the future and she saw an accurate representation of her granddaughter as a forty plus year old woman.
This afternoon I took to the back porch for a little Vitamin D and thinking time.
My own bird-brain has been filled to capacity and I needed to empty it out.
I’ve learned a few techniques to assist with the brain dump. I’ve been told it is called “self care” and “processing.”
Call it whatever you like. But for me it is taking time to be quiet, reduced screen time, throwing Dottie her ball and wrestling it back when she brings it to me. It is thinking and talking to Jesus, making myself sit with the hurt and the questions and circling back to there are some things I just can’t understand. It’s having a snack and allowing myself just to be still so that I can know Who is in charge and trust He will make right all the broken things, especially my crushed to bits heart.
About the time my brain was settling down I felt the cool steady breeze, heard the wind chimes ring below me and the birds chirping above me. The truth is they had probably been doing it the whole time I was outside, but my mind was so noisy I couldn’t discern the sounds of peace or feel the breath of Heaven.
I smiled and wondered what bird friends I was hearing.
Maybe the Tufted Titmouse or the Cardinal that’s been making frequent appearances and tweeting the same phrase over and over. He sounds as if he is telling me “Birdie, Birdie, pretty pretty Birdie” he kind of gets on my nerves with his boastfulness but he is correct, he is pretty.
I grabbed my phone, opened my app and let it do its thing, and there I was, or the bird representation of me, the Bird of the Day, along with quite an ensemble this fine sunny spring afternoon. There was a new friend, Yellow-rumped Warbler. “At least I’m not him” I thought.
The Robin signifies change and better days are on the horizon, she is resilient and pudgy and when she is in community with her other bird friends she is indeed unique and at her red breast, I mean her best. She will be okay and she will persevere and maybe in that she is indeed unique and unusual.
Job lost everything…he questioned God, he questioned his friends, he questioned everything not knowing that God had allowed the losing of all the things to demonstrate his purity and willingness to serve the Lord despite the circumstances and loss of it all.
Job was taken to the crucible of tragedy and came through it acknowledging God.
I have declared recently that I sit on a pile of ash and ruin and in my imagination that is exactly what I see, me sitting atop a soot and ash pile, unworthy, dirty, broken, exposed and humiliated. For weeks I’ve tried to figure out exactly how beauty comes from ashes…ashes make soap..maybe something to do with cleaning but I am struggling to make that work in my mind.
“Ashes are good for?…Reminder, do a Google search and find positive uses for ashes.” Google says: “Soil improvement, making soap (I knew that one) and mild abrasive cleaning.”
Surely there is something better, more beautiful?
Work, home, worsening of already terrible life circumstances, conflict, and confusion. I feel stretched and torn, ripped to shreds and still I sit atop the ash heap hoping that some good thing can come of this ugly mess.
I persist in the things I know are good, know are right and have come to understand are the only lasting and truly decent things this world has to offer; those are the things of Christ. I go to church, CBS, continue to encourage and to love those around me, I point to truth and I read the Word per the usual, as part of the routine.
Chronologically I am in Job, the irony of it all makes me chuckle, I’ve often thought at some point God had to’ve said, “Have you considered my servant, Amy Martin?”
Back in the early morning hours of February 1st, February-a historically horrible month. February-the month I dread most, February short in its duration, yet catastrophic in its devastation.
When February was just a few hours old I completed my unfinished January reading. I was exhausted, behind, a day of work, bitter cold, achy eyes and more shedding of tears forced me to abandon my reading just prior to bed. I took up January 31st reading early, I’ve been in Job, lived like Job, was finishing up Job when I began to read.
“Then Job answered the Lord and said: “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. ‘Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you make it known to me.’ I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”
Job 42:1-6
The last line hit me square between the eyes: there Job sat and what of all things brought about his repentant heart? Dust and ashes! Well they were a sign of his repentant heart, I reckon but the answer had been given to me.
What good can come from ash and ruin? Repentance, change, reconciliation to God and restoration of relationship. In His kindness the Lord led me to a place of understanding and revelation right atop the ash heap.
Ash, the catalyst for the cleansing of the heart.
Post Script…I wrote this fast and furiously in the wee hours of the morning, in early February. I wrote it using my cellphone, a google doc, and my One Year Chronological Bible, my one and only sidekick, unless of course you count the box of Dolla’ Store tissues that I keep bedside in the event there is the shedding of tears, a nearly daily occurrence, but like Job the Lord has answered me with the declaration of Who He is, in His kindness He is revealing to me the very fact that it is indeed His kindness that brings us to repentance and cleanliness.
