Skip to main content

If I were a Butterfly



This post may end up sounding cliche, but I just can't help myself this time.

See, we bought a butterfly hatching kit and so, needless to say, I've had the life cycle of a butterfly on my mind. I've always known the story of the butterfly - ugly caterpillar, transformation, beauty, yadda, yadda,  yadda, but I've never actually seen it all first hand.

So we got a jar of dirt and caterpillars. You all know I'm not the biggest fan of creepy crawlies, but fortunately they are delivered in such a way that you don't have to touch them until they are safely in their chrysalises (which, in my day, was called a cocoon, but times change I suppose). The whole caterpillar-to-chrysalis part of the project was quick and a little dirty. They trudge around in the dirt and get fat. Within a week there was slimy silk all over the jar and about 1/4 of the fuzzy caterpillar bodies all over the ground (parts they do not need apparently).

Then we waited. And waited. Another week of nothing - I wasn't even sure they were alive honestly and was hoping not to disappoint the little ones. But then, one morning as I was pouring coffee and staring out the window I saw it - an honest-to-God butterfly was in our netted habitat! I ran outside whooping and hollering like a little kid, rousing the fam out of bed to come and see. There it was, dripping with yucky red meconium and wrinkled and unsure - but it was as butterfly. It was colorless and essentially motionless.

Suddenly all around it little wings started busting out of those chrysalises left and right. We'd watch as one after the other, they struggled, fought, kicked (and maybe screamed in their tiny butterfly voices) to be released from their little safe haven. They'd stand up, colorless and confused and, no matter where they hatched, they stumbled to the side netting and climbed up to dry out and figure out this new life.

Slowly, one-by-one, they would start to get color in their wings, they start to crawl, start to try to fly. We placed fruit and nectar in the cage and they found it and drank and got bigger and stronger. Soon they were fluttering and flying all around their little habitat until, with both anticipation and a little sadness, they were ready to be set free. And when we released them, at least one came back to tell us goodbye. To thank us and for us to thank them.

See, as cliche as it sounds, life is like that - cyclical, with hard times and dark times. Sometimes we have to leave things behind, even go into hiding so-to-speak, become something different. And sometimes being that something different doesn't look as good as it sounds at first. We have to dry out our wings, get some color back in us, and then we are ready to fly. And much like our little painted ladies, our life is short too, so we have to fly.

I was so excited the girls got to have this nature experience but I'm also excited I did. I may not be a butterfly, but I do thank you God for giving me wings!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Her profession's her religion; Her sin is her lifelessness

Mother's Day 2019 was perfectly boring. It was an overcast, eat too much after church, take a nap, and go to the library kind of afternoon and I could not have asked for anything more. Mother's Day always brings with it bittersweet memories of the two little loves that allow me to celebrate this occasion. As kids do, they are getting big. I did not get one Mother's Day gift that had a hand print on it. It was a tinge sad. Like Mother's Day, the nearing end of school also makes me wax nostalgic. How could they be so old? Am I doing all the things to make them healthy, successful and most of all happy? I have been reading and thinking a lot about Grace lately. In the context of mothering, I need a lot of it; yet, until lately I'm not sure I had a real understanding of it (or as much of an understanding as one can have of something like Grace). Anyone who really knows me knows that I am a doer, a pleaser, an achiever, and a ball of anxious worry hidden behind...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hello! The Phone is Ringing So I Say Hello!

I’m not sure what I expected, really. I guess I thought that when Pumpkin officially crossed the one year threshold into toddler-hood that things miraculously got easier. I had a little parenting-confidence and puffed my chest out just a little as I slowly toddled with her, grasping onto my index finger, to the doctor’s office for her one year appointment (see video for an idea of how slow slow is). I sat proudly in the “well baby” room (a place we haven’t spent much time) remembering the days I sat in that same room crying, looking frantically around for a spare diaper and praying they wouldn’t call her name before I could unhook her from her carseat (which took a long time back then) and changed her diaper. One year later here I was. We had come so far. I was proud of us and I looked at those new mothers with a little knowing pity. In all my one year of wisdom, I sat there glowing with the realization that the hard times were behind us. I didn’t have a “baby” anymore, I had a toddle...
3 comments
Read more

Salute Her When Her Birthday Comes

So, I'm a year older than last time I posted. Birthdays have always been a time of introspection for me.  I have a natural tendency to get stuck in my own head anyway.  Occasions like birthdays only make it worse. It didn't help that this year I turned 33 on the same weekend as the Inauguration and MLK day. I'm sure you're asking yourself what any of this has to do with...well, anything. Let me start with 33 - or, as my sister-in-law put it in a text to me, "the age of Jesus."  That's right, as depressing as it might seem, I keep dwelling on the fact that I'm now the age that Jesus was when he died.  33.  He died on a cross to save all mankind.  I, on the other hand, was glad my children got out the door this morning without too much unidentifiable crust on their faces. Then there is MLK, who died in his thirties for the cause of all of humanity - peace, equality, love. And then there's the Inauguration.  Now, whether you voted fo...
2 comments
Read more