"What a Bute"

"What a Bute"

Watercolor on Yupo

9"x11"

     I've wanted to paint this beautiful rooster all summer.  His name is Shoulders, due to his beautiful black shoulders on a white body that he sported as a young chick.  Agreeing to purchase him, along with the act of holding him, feeding him, and keeping him warm at night was a demonstration of the goodness of God.  I had grown up with a horrific fear of birds.  I'd carried that fear all of my life.  I remember back in college during a drawing class in which the professor mandated that we draw using a stuffed pheasant as our model.  I was so afraid of birds that I couldn't do the project.  Nor, could I even stay in the same room with that stuffed bird!  I acknowledged the beauty of birds, but for me a bird meant terror, and so many times an out and out attack.  The national bird of Costa Rica even made a low dive at me on a swinging bridge in the rain forest.  I remember screaming as my back hit the deck in desperation.  My husband said if he had not have witnessed it, he would never have believed it.  Over a year ago, I attended a Christian retreat, called Identity Weekend.  My good friends Curtis and Heather Ward put this together several times a year.  It was at that weekend that I faced where that fear came from and determined to get rid of it!  To God's glory, "it" is gone!  Gone! Gone! Gone!  Now, I can enjoy these beautiful creatures.  Now, I wonder....how in the world could I have ever been afraid of such a thing?  What are you afraid of?  Fear is a horrible thing.  Whether it is afraid of the dark, the water, flying, a snake, or just a bird.  You don't have to keep it hanging around making you miserable.  God didn't give us fear.  He gave us power and love, and  a sound mind.  Power to say no to fear.  It's time to say no.  Amen.