Sunday, September 18, 2011

Roosting Chickens

(I know he is a rooster, Dad!)
This past Friday night my 9 year old granddaughter spent the night so I could take her to her soccer game the next morning. As always, I enjoyed my time with her. But the theme of this post is not her or grandchildren, or soccer. It's about very large chickens coming home to roost.

Coming home to roost - you will have to face the consequences of your mistakes or bad deeds. I have been joking with a friend of mine recently about the size of the chickens that come home to roost, specifically good old Foghorn Leghorn, a cartoon character from my youth, a very over-sized, aggressive and loud chicken being the chicken that comes a-roosting from unchecked family dysfunction. It's not funny but as I am basically an optimistic person, I have to find some humor in times of stress - but back to the reason I wanted to write down these thoughts.
Yesterday as I was watching my granddaughter's soccer game, which was in Navarre, Florida and adjacent to a holding pond, a mosquito the size of a hornet kept landing on me and biting me, even through my clothes. I decided that viewing the soccer game from a vehicle with the windows up and air conditioning running was a better idea, and so I did that. This tactic also allowed for some people-watching as the playground and other fields were open to my view. And my thoughts became serious as I watched.
The small boy playing in the sand who absolutely would not respond to his mother to leave. And she let him win until in frustration she snatched him up and lugged a wiggling, screaming, mad and rebellious small child across the parking lot. The sisters who had each other but were so over-weight that they walked funny. And they made me think about how all the small things that we let go end up growing, but it seems that they usually grow somewhere in a dimension where they are unseen until they decide to come home to roost, and they are large - as will be more serious issues with these two instances with children.
And so the solution? I don't know except for careful contemplation of your ways. There is a scripture in Haggai chapter 1 where the prophet Haggai is encouraging the people to give careful thought to their ways. It is not a recent problem that we take many easier routes instead of the right route, for the future.

2 comments:

  1. I find myself often in that same position. People watching and then judging what I see. It is sort of automatic for me. My children don't like to see me judge or take a position on alot of issues but I think that is a big reason why our world has gone so screwy!! Tolerance and patience are certainly required to live among the many, but when do you say, "Enough is enough!!" I have more of a knee-jerk reaction to alot of these situations, I guess it comes with the age, but it certainly doesn't help with blood pressure. One of my biggest bone of contention is what we are exposed to and more importantly what our young people are over-exposed to and yet don't really have a response other than it is entertainment or free speech. For ex., Jersey Shore. I really shouldn't get started but that is just one example. Yeah, I know. . But it glamourizes behavior we should reject!! Nuff said by me. . . Like your thoughts though. And parenting or "lack of". . . I wish we were back in the 50's or 60's. The family unit was respected and guarded; and now it is "que sera sera".

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  2. You inspired me today to do my own blog, a new adventure for me. Go see my New Beginnings.

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