On my wall I have a canvas art piece of a bird in a cage. It reminds me of one Maya Angelou’s poems: “ I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” The last stanza is my favorite:

The caged bird sings with
A fearful trill of things unknown
But longed for still and his
Tune is heard on the distant hill
For the caged bird sings of freedom.

There are days when life is just perfect, as perfect as life on earth can be. The children are all getting along. I respond to the challenges thrown my way in a way that leaves me with no regrets. I feel close to my friends and my extended family. My husband and I had a chance to speak 3 complete sentences together that were not parenting related. My house sparkles and shines and the laundry is put away. The sun isn’t too hot and there’s a little breeze dancing with the leaves and singing with the wind chimes. Perfection.

But then there are the days that are just so hard. They are hard before I even wake up since I’m beginning the day on mere moments of sleep. They continue hard as mean tones jump from my throat as I reprove the mean tones leaping from child to child. I resent my husband for being able to drive to work in complete silence and have adult conversation with a variety of people. I trip and stumble and fall catastrophically on all of my sinful tendencies. And the day ends hard.

And then there are the days with a mixture of both: the brutally hard sprinkled with moments of perfection. The falling and then the picking up and brushing off. The tears and then the weepy smiles. The harshness and the reconciliation. The broken and the restored. Most days are like this: days of contrasts, with perplexing juxtapositions. And in those days I know why the caged bird sings.

I am an eternal soul in a temporal body. I am designed in the image of God for eternity. My entire person longs to be freed from the chains of sin in this decaying culture on this sobbing planet. But God allows me to catch glimpses of what I look forward to and those glimpses cause me to sing even as I am weary of the struggle. Life is the struggle. The caged bird sings of freedom.