I Would Have Found this Blue Bird!
Peacock, Cincinnati Zoo 2007
1 John 4:7 NIV
"Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God."
I looked around my backyard for that blue bird but couldn't find her. She had to be flying over the house somewhere, hovering, spying, listening to my conversations with my brother and sister.
I tried to stay out of trouble before we went to Farmersburg, Indiana, but it's hard for a six year old to be good. No matter what I did, that doggone, rotten, blue bird would beat me there every time and tell Grandpa everything I had done.
I loved Grandpa. He was a kind man, strong-shouldered and big-hearted. He dropped out of school in third grade and worked the coal mines in Dugger to help support his family when his father died of cancer in 1910.
Grandpa spent years in the mines. He worked alongside his older brothers. He was the youngest son of thirteen children.
Grandpa lied about his age to fight in WWI with the 1st Division, 18th Infantry of the U.S. Army for General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing.
Grandpa was a doughboy. Fought in every major battle and was reported "Missing in Action, presumed dead" in the telegram that arrived home on the farm in Dugger.
Instead, he had a pistol in his hand and just enough life in his wounded body that lay in a crater shell with other injured American soldiers to order the Germans searching for the dead and dying to carry them to the nearest Red Cross station.
He went through surgeries and leaches until his wounded leg healed, and he rejoined his company in time to fight some more and to march across enemy lines into Germany.
He returned home at the end of the war having earned the Purple Heart, the Occupation of Germany medal, and the Silver Star.
He was a brave man. I didn't know about his war heroics. He didn't speak of his war experiences to his family. He was just Grandpa to me. The scar on his leg was obvious, and he had to tell us about how he got that, but otherwise, his previous life before we were born did not matter.
However, I didn't want to disappoint him, so when he pulled me up onto his lap and told me what the blue bird had whispered to him about my antics, I was incredulous.
How could that bird know so much about me? If I could only have a talk with it! I would straighten it out!
Grandpa chuckled at my amazement, then hugged, and kissed me. His cotton t-shirt smelled like a mixture of sweat and sweet tobacco. He wasn't supposed to smoke (Granny didn't like it), but whenever he went into his workshop, he filled up his pipe, lit it, and puffed away.
When we'd head back home to Cincinnati, I'd look for that crazy blue bird following us. I never saw it.
Maybe Grandpa had a direct line to God instead. I'm sure God kept a good eye on me, too, in those days.
In fact, I know Grandpa was on good terms with God. He read the Bible every morning when he woke up--the first thing he did. He may have only had a third grade education, but he had read the Bible from front to back more times than I have with my Masters in English.
I'm certain Grandpa still watches over me, and he doesn't need blue birds any more to tell him what I'm up to.
But whenever I see blue birds, I think of my Grandpa, Cecil Raymond Butler.
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Lord, thank you for watching over my life and for blessing me with people who have watched over me and loved me.
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