Yesterday, my friend Kim and I went to a lecture on Monarch butterflies by Gene Cannon at the Reelfoot NWR. We got to see the tiny eggs on milkweed leaves, to tiny caterpillars,  to big fat caterpillars (their job to get fat!) and  the beautiful jade green chrysalis with its artistic gold trim.

I held a medium fat caterpillar curled up on my palm.  I gently stroked it and it uncurled and crawled up my finger. Alas, we had no butterflies! Two of the chrysalis were overdue to dazzle us by  becoming butterflies. You can’t rush metamorphoses!!

We can’t rush our own transformations.  It is stressful to try. We can want to be anyone but ourself, anywhere but here.  I wonder if God giggles as we become us, knowing we will fly.  I know I got stuck in the worm stage. I think my lesson here is this: there is HOPE. God gives  us examples from nature. We later walked through a butterfly garden and were amazed by the glory of these former caterpillars.

An old cartoon on my refrigerator addresses this well.  Two caterpillars look up in the sky as a butterfly flies by and one says, “You’d never get me up in one of those!”

Happy Day!