Craig’s background includes over thirty years of experience as a counselor in a variety of treatment settings including psychiatric hospitals, schools for the blind, organizations for the physically handicapped, churches, and outpatient settings. He also possesses ten years of experience in pastoral ministry. To date, he has published six books and has had a large number of other works published in a wide variety of magazines. Craig founded an outpatient practice that provides counseling, coaching, and consulting services to individuals, marriages, families, various businesses as well as church and ministry organizations. Craig is a Licensed Professional Counselor in Colorado, a Certified Professional Life Coach, and an Ordained Minister. https://craiglpc.com/ mailto:craiglpc4@gmail.com
Sparrows in the Garage
By Craig D. Lounsbrough, M. Div., LPC An unknown author wrote, “Real treasure lies not in what that can be seen, but what cannot be seen.” We possess this strangely cockeyed perception that we must be able to see something in order to treasure it. More than that, we think that we have to be able to somehow hold it in our hands. And then, in far too many cases, we think we have to be able to own in order to treasure it. But we rarely consider that we can treasure what we can’t see. In fact, it may well be that to treasure something in a truly treasured manner, it must be entirely elusive; it must be something that we can’t see, that we can’t hold and that we can’t own. When we possess something, the fact that we can possess it diminishes its worth. Being unable to possess something suggests that it has a value beyond us, or beyond anyone else for that matter. Real treasures are elusive because if they’re not, they don’t have the value inherent within them to genuinely be categorized as treasures.
Sparrows and a Clapboard Garage Every spring, the sparrows came back to the old garage; something like coming back to a comfy old friend. Upon their return, their boundless energy and contagious enthusiasm seemed wildly intoxicating; vibrant, vibrating, and filled with all the energy of spring. I often wondered if they had spent the cold, gray months of winter in a nearly uncontrollable anticipation of greeting their old friend once winter had rolled off the horizon of spring. 52 | M AG A Z I N E N A M E PAGE 3 52
Sometimes in life, there seems to be a subtle yet wonderfully warm camaraderie of sorts that develops between things you’d never think would or could be connected like that. That seemed to explain the quiet, entirely unspoken kind of relationship that existed between the old garage and the sparrows. They seemed like long seasoned friends that didn’t need to say much because the bond that they shared spoke more than words ever could. The old clapboard garage and the house sparrows were each warmed, gently magnified, and beautifully enhanced by the other. Each was a treasure embraced as a treasure. The sparrows would glide up between the heavy wooden doors and slip by the sturdy steel tracks that they ran on; seemingly nestling into the garage’s soft, clapboard embrace. Every spring, the sparrows would settle in and nest right above the heavy wooden doors, tucked just inside, at the thin edge of the garage attic. There was too much love and warmth in the old garage, so there were usually two or three nests tucked above the wooden doors. You could see the sparrows incessantly coming and going, but you couldn’t see what they were doing. They were tireless; transporting bits of straw and brown grasses into the garage; building a place to birth the treasures of the next generation. Within moments, they would poke out elated heads and then burst into flight with empty beaks. In no time, they would return with more strands of grass, or bits of weed, or cottony fibers, or discarded pieces of string … over and over.
