Audacity, a Parable

I would like to share a very special and precious story with you.  This is a true story, and reflects the deep feelings with which my wife, Jeanne, and I regard our birds from whom we have learned many important lessons...

In September of 2007, my wife, Jeanne, and I bought four baby parakeets from a pet store in San Antonio.  One of these little birds had the curiosity to venture and the capacity to squeeze her tiny body through the bars of her cage. She was focused enough to wander across our living room floor to the cages where most of our flock dwelled.

We put her back into her cage, but discovered only a short time later that she had again escaped, but to where?  No one knew!  After two hours of diligent searching, Jeanne found the baby bird inside a "horizontally bladed" floor fan, which was running at full speed.  The little bird had crawled inside the fan and was hanging onto the inside wall of the fan.  Her tiny head was only about an inch or two from the underside of the fan blade! 

We thought that it was rather audacious and fool-hardy for a bird to climb into a fan where and when that fan was running at full speed; hence, she more than earned her name, "Audacity"!  We let the four baby birds out to join our flock a few weeks later...

And along came "Audacity"!  In no time at all, "Audacity" took up with one of our elderly male parakeets, "Dana Brent," who at ten years of age is nearly blind.  "Dana Brent" had recently lost his best friend, "Jared" who, also at ten years of age, had recently died and who had left "Dana Brent" blind, lost, and totally alone!

"Audacity" is absolutely mesmerized by "Dana Brent," and she "moons" into his eyes, like a young girl in love!  She feeds him; she grooms him, and she follows him wherever he goes.  She is his constant, adoring, life-long companion. She wanted a companion and found the companion she wanted, for life!

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Maybe a lot of married couples, who think that their marriages are in trouble or are over, could take lessons from our "Audacity"!  Sometimes it takes total devotion and an unconditional "Christ-like" love on the part of one marriage partner to regain the love and the trust of the other!  It is possible, but it requires focus, devotion and help from our Father in Heaven.

If each of us truly understood the Plan of Salvation given to us by our Heavelnly Father for the happiness of His children and the vital role which our spouse plays in this Plan, we would be much more appreciative of our marriage partner.  We would hold our husband, if we were a wife or our wife, if we were a husband, in a the highest regard and position, because we would understand that without our spouse, we can not achieve the ultimate happiness which our Heavenly Father wants for us and has in store for us. 

Put another way, we are commanded to worship our Heavenly Father in the name of His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ and to love and to honor and worship our Saviour, Jesus Christ as the Deity which He is.  But also, we are commanded to love and honor our spouse.  This important commandment puts a human being only slightly below Deity in importance to our salvation.  Someone once said, "If you were close to our Heavenly Father yesterday, but you are not close to Him today, who moved?"  Similarly, if you and your spouse were close when you were first married, but you have now drifted apart, who moved?  Was it you or your spouse or both?  

Families are forever, here on earth and in the eternities.  If we do not love and honor our spouse here, and I am particularly speaking to us men, we will not love her in the eternities, because we will not be where she and our children are!  Do my words do anything to change our perspective on the sanctity of marriage and our marriage vows, to love, honor and cherish our spouse?  I certainly hope so, because I know and testify that they are true!