I Wish I Was A Bird

Location: My Bird Feeder
Psalm 55

“Oh, that I had the wings of a dove! I would fly away and be at rest. I would flee far away and stay in the desert; I would hurry to my place of shelter, far from the tempest and storm.” (Psalm 55:6-8, NIV)

You know it’s a bad day when you wish you were a bird. And on this particularly hard day, I wanted wings. Anxiety is like that for me sometimes. Some days it feels lighter and I barely notice it, but on other days it comes at me like a freight train and I’m standing in the middle of the tracks. When it seems too overwhelming to bear, I daydream I could fly away from it. 

All it takes is that one trigger and my mind starts to spiral. I go from zero to ninja, ready to strike at any moment. No one’s fighting me of course, there’s no immediate danger, but nevertheless I’m stuck standing at the ready…waiting…evaluating every potential threat and planning every counter-maneuver to ensure the win. The fight never comes, but the planning is tiresome. It’s exhausting being a ninja. 

And on one of these ninja days I was watching the birds at my bird feeder. We get all sort of birds at our feeders, from Mourning Doves to Indigo Buntings, we’ve developed quite a rookery. As I watched the birds carelessly eat their seeds, I thought to myself, It must be really nice being a bird. Birds don’t look like they’re heavy with sadness or weighed down by worry. All they have to do is eat and procreate. Sure there might be other things they do, but overall, it seems like a nice, simple life. And when I caught myself having that thought, that’s when I knew I had crossed the threshold from anxiety to despair.

And thank goodness for the Bible. I’m not alone in wishing I was a bird. We see a similar sentiment in the lament of Psalm 55. We’re not really sure of the exact circumstances of this Psalm, but we do know the Psalmist had a lot going on, and had a lot of anxiety and inner turmoil as a result. In verse 2 and 5 he or she says (1), “My thoughts trouble me and I am distraught…my heart is in anguish within me; fear and trembling have beset me; horror has overwhelmed me… (Psalm 55:2-5, NIV).”

And because of all this turmoil the psalmist then expresses, “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove. I would fly away and be at rest. I would flee far away and stay in the desert. I would hurry to my place of shelter far from the tempest and storm.” (Psalm 55:6-8, NIV). 

I don’t know where you find yourself today, but if you’re having an I-wish-I-was-a-bird day, then I’d like to suggest two things this Psalm recommends:

1. Express your feelings to God

The Psalmist in this psalm doesn’t hold anything back. From trash talking enemies to being honest about feeling terror, the psalmist lays it all out before God. Sometimes we think that we can’t really bring our emotions to God. Sure, we can praise God when we’re grateful, we can confess our sins when we’re bad, but complain? Moan? Wish ill on my enemies? That seems off-limits. Yet that’s the liberating part about the psalms: we are invited to share our innermost feelings with God, the deep hurt and rejection, the overwhelming fear and terror that we stuff down so that we can live our lives not looking like a crazy person. 

Friends, it’s time to bring it out of hiding. Lay it on the table while you sit with God and see what God has to say about it. 

Now a second recommendation of this Psalm:

2. Make a choice to move from despair to trust.

Please note (as evidenced by this Psalm): we have to go through step 1 before we can go to step 2. So often we are taught in our Christian culture to go straight to Step 2. Don’t be fearful, trust God. Don’t be angry, trust God. Don’t be sad, trust God. But when we skip over acknowledging our legitimate emotions, we find ourselves in denial rather than trust. In order to trust God, we must have something to trust God about and in order to have something to trust God about we have to understand the gravity of our situation.

"...when we skip over acknowledging our legitimate emotions, we find ourselves in denial rather than trust." 

Now, there is another end of this pendulum. Some of us are so comfortable with the idea of lament, feeling all the feels and unleashing all the anger, that we find ourselves getting stuck in these emotions. We know we’re justified in our feelings—he betrayed me, she lied to me, they hurt me—and we are. And, at some point—at the right point in our journey—we have to make a choice to move from our anger, our grief, our hurt to trust. 

There comes a point when we have to acknowledge that we can’t fly in circles around our problems and we can’t fly away from our problems. We need God’s help to face our problems and move forward with trust.

We need a “but” in our story. Verse 23 says, “But as for me, I trust in you" (Psalm 55:23, NIV, emphasis mine)

Finding this “but” in our story might look different for all of us. We might need help getting there. Help might look like lots of prayer sprinkled in with medication, a therapist, a pastor, a good meditation app—finding our “but” is a process, and it’s a necessary process.

So friend, feel all the feels and when you’re ready, put your hope and trust in the God who loves you, who hears you, and who died for you. Amen.

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Breath Prayer

Inhale: I cast my cares upon the Lord
Exhale: and the Lord sustains me.

(Adapted from Psalm 55:22)

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Notes:
(1) The NIV attributes the Psalm to David but the The Expositor's Bible Commentary did not specify authorship.
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Work consulted for this devotion: Longman III, Tremper and Garland, David E. The Expositor's Bible Commentary Revised Edition Volume 5: Psalms. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008.