The Little Nuthatch. . . Mating for Life.

This little fellow was at my bird feeder a few days ago. I love watching the little chorus of nuthatches, titmice, and chickadees which frequent my feeder every season of the year.

I wanted to know more about nuthatches, especially about their breeding and nesting habits so I researched them on the Internet. The following is from the Audubon Field Guide:

Pairs remain together on nesting territory all year, may mate for life. Courtship behavior begins by late winter. In courtship display, male raises head, spreads tail, droops wings, sways back and forth, and bows deeply. Male also performs much courtship feeding of female.

I don’t know exactly why, but this deeply touched my heart. I have come to expect larger birds. . . swans, geese, raptors, etc. to mate for life, but for this to be found in a small songbird greatly effected me. . .

I have come to greatly value, 'mating for life.'  In my own life I have experienced first hand the awful effects of divorce. . . once as a victim, and again some twenty years later as the perpetrator.

I was foolish. I didn’t understand my actions. I was unhappy, and I saw only one path to happiness. . . to abandon my family. In my selfishness, my happiness out weighed all else.

There surely are reasons for which relationships, in which there are children, must not continue, but I am certain that is a very very small minority of reasons for which those relationships end. The vast majority of them end for what, at the heart of it is a combination of foolishness, and/or selfishness.

The function of sex and our powerful sex drive is procreation. . . continuance of the species, and the side-effect of that is pleasure. Today we have turned this upside down, to where we have come to see the purpose of sex as pleasure, and the side-effect is babies.

By virtually every metric. . . I know of no exceptions. . . by every yardstick, children are better off when raised by a mother and a father. I do not say that single mothers or fathers cannot successfully raise a child or children, but that children raised in a two parent home, lead happier, and more successful lives measured in many different ways.

Time and again in my classes in the jail, I have asked the men in front of me, how many had fathers in the home when they were growing up, and number of hands raised is virtually always less than 10%, and of those who did have a father in the home and yet still ended up in jail, usually the father was present physically, but there was something wrong. . .he was not emotionally present. . . He was dealing with an addiction or other psychological issues.

A mother can successfully raise a child, but she cannot be a father. The same a father can raise a child, but he cannot be a mother. He can perform mother functions, but he cannot be a role model to a little girl, as to how to be a mother herself. . . .He cannot be a role model to a little boy, on how to treat a wife, and how to interact with the mother.

On so many levels there is incompleteness without both a mother and a father in the home. Our society is being torn apart, by the anti-social behavior of fatherless boys. Our girls, not having fathers themselves, don’t understand the importance of a father and importantly needing, but often not having the love of a father causes them to unwisely substitute sex for love, thereby repeating the cycle. . . Our boys are bombarded with messages that they are not required in the raising of children, and therefore undervalue themselves in the role of fathers. . . on and on. . . on so many different levels the message our young people receive is confusing and very misleading.

Important cultural role models migrate from relationship to relationship, with no permanency. No importance is recognized anymore of the significance of entering into sexual relations with someone. . . and therefore there is a complete unpreparedness if a pregnancy does result from these all too casual encounters.

The morality of the Bible, is not to have sex outside of the structure of marriage. . .no premarital sex, and divorce limited to extreme circumstances. . . Great value is placed on the inviolate sanctity of marriage. You can snicker and laugh at this old fashioned morality, but what are the results? It works far better at producing happy, and well adjusted people than what we see as the obvious consequences of our present selfish and totally hedonistic social experiment.

Children are so fragile, and precious. They fool us by their apparent hardiness. . . they can tolerate great hardship and abuse and deficiencies, but survival and thriving are not synonymous. They only truly flourish within the structure of a healthy and complete family. . .

We are in the midst of a great experiment. . . The thesis seems to be that as a society we will be improved by the destruction of the traditional family. . . It is presented as fact. . . an entirely logical conclusion of well established fact, but it is only an unproven theory. . . without antecedents. There are no past examples on which to base the expectation that this theory will be validated. . .

Genesis 2:23-24

And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. (24) Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

Talk to your children. . . talk honestly and openly to your grandchildren about the dangers of promiscuity, and the realities of single parenthood. It is not some else's job. It is not politically correct to speak of such things in public school. . . without thorough instruction and preparation our children cannot be blamed for being led astray. . .

I once was blind, but now I see. . .

I love you my God. . .
Thank you my God. . .

Dave