What are the Sparrows here to teach me?

Do you believe God uses nature as a tool to communicate with us? I do. Whenever an animal starts making its presence known to me, I try to look it up. It's as easy as typing "spiritual meaning (insert your animal here)" into Google and finding a reputable site.

I've had many an animal to Google in the past couple of years. The most recent one that came to me was the sparrow.

While I was growing up, my Grandmother always fed the sparrows in her driveway. Now that I am living in her home, I am the one feeding the sparrows. The kids and I have been doing it all summer long, but it didn't occur to me to look them up until this week. Why? Probably because they're such an ordinary bird. Nothing exotic.

Well, wouldn't you know it. Those darn sparrows do have a message for me. Because the sparrow is small, part of its spiritual significance is to remind me that I do not need a big house or flashy car to be important.

Very interesting considering we are living in my Grandmother's modest home while we work on selling our Florida home. As the market has continued to decline over time, the price of our home has had to go down right along with it -- making us realize we are not going to be able to buy the Northern home we have been dreaming of. We have had to scale down our expectations quite a bit. We're OK with that and are actually thinking smaller is better, anyway...perhaps it will allow us more of a travel budget to get back to Florida and visit family and friends there!

The sparrow also brings spiritual messages of simplicity, and boy are we enjoying that here at my Grandmother's house. Most of our belongings are still in our Florida home, so we are making do with much less. Guess what!? We are doing more than "making do," we are actually doing very well. Paul loves his job, the kids love their school, and I'm busy with my business and enjoying being near friends and family.

Here's to the sparrow!

-- Written with love and honor for Grandma who always took care of the birds.