Nest of Doom
I have an episode from my childhood that I don’t talk about much.
We were having work done on our house. The workers accidentally decapitated a huge mouse; they swore it was a pregnant female. As they moved onto another part, they found a nest of baby mice. They put it into a cutoff gallon milk jug and left it on our kitchen table, assuming the momma was what they had just killed.
I got excited. Mom and dad weren’t too pleased. I did a lot of work to find out what they needed. I kept them on top of the fridge for warmth and hand fed them milk from a dropper. Their high-pitched squeaks made me giggle. I took them to school to show my classmates. I had offers from kids to take them home, and I rejected each one. These were my babies and I was going to take care of them.
My joy and excitement lasted for a day. My dad was furious. I clearly wasn’t getting the message. He met me about four o’clock and said I couldn’t keep them. I begged, I pleaded, I cried. Nothing changed his mind. I asked to take them back to school, and he rejected that. I ran back to my room stomping with every step.
When I came out, they were gone. I’m not sure where he put them. He promised me he supposedly put them some place safe where Mother Nature would take care of them. Since I knew he was a God-fearing, ultra-orthodox Catholic, I suspected they were rodent sushi-bites for the stray the next-door neighbor was keeping (no meaningless death, all life lives at the expensive of other life, yada-yada-yada). He was the devil incarnate, the meanest man alive, a cold-blooded killer I hated for weeks until I moved back to being interested in volcanoes.
Now I get it. As an adult, I see what I couldn’t back then and my dad could. Rodents are bad. They eat the farmer’s produce and grain. They come in and eat our food. If our food isn’t available, they’ll eat our clothes and things we’ve put in storage that aren’t properly stored. They carry bacteria and other microorganisms that cause diseases like leptospirosis. Their hitchhikers like fleas, mites, and ticks carry about 15 different diseases according to the CDC, including babesiosis, Colorado tick fever, Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and West Nile encephalitis (Yes, my search for information on bubonic plague started this list). And in our family, you can be so allergic you get flu-like symptoms as soon as one scoots across the floor without your knowledge.
I wonder how many of us have that spiritual baby mouse nest in our lives, that situation that looks so good and so right. We’re willing to put effort into it and fight it out, but when we run to Abba He’s not as excited as we are. As a matter of fact, He’s a bit displeased and asks us to let go. He knows we’re excited, but He being outside of humanity’s linear timeline can see the end and the beginning. He knows all the dangers of the nest we’re handing Him, and He wants us to let go to avoid the spiritual disease of sin in all its many manifestations, like the nibbled schedule that doesn’t have time for the Word of God, the chewed and depleted self-esteem of trying to do what you’re not called to do, the sick situation of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and at risk for falling into an emotional affair.
Because Abba is a gentleman, unlike my dad (okay, so I still feel a bit of that rebellion), He won’t force the issue. He won’t force us to let go. It has to be our choice.
Feeling the bite of free will?
