From Caterpillar to Butterfly

Watching a Monarch  grow from a small egg to a rather large butterfly is one of life's treasures and mysteries!  It is a bit like watching your own children grow from a lump into mature adults, but condensed into a much shorter time period with a lot less worries and expense!  I only had one emergency run to get milkweed this round and almost missed out on his emergence into a full sized adult.

I found my little guy under a cabbage leaf a milkweed leaf with a group of students.  I explained that I would not normally remove a creature from its native surroundings.  The only reason we took him and his sibling in was to remove them from harm's way... 100+ stampeding feet seems like harm's way to me!

My first grade students loved having another class pet.  They named one Fatty and the other Baby.  One student especially loved reading the same book over and over to them because they loved the book, Dolphin's First Leap!  I wish I had gotten a picture to share with you of her sitting in a chair with the caterpillar jar sitting right next to her as she read that book.

As we daily picked milkweed and watched in amazement as our caterpillars grew, we noticed one morning that Fatty was hanging upside down in the shape of a J.  My class was sure that he was dead.  They were happy to find out this was part of his life cycle and he was preparing to go into his chrysalis stage.  How exciting to share the wonder and surprise with a group of children as full of wonder as first graders.  They loved checking daily to see if the chrysalis was changing.  Sadly school ended for the year the day after Baby joined Fatty in the chrysalis process.

In my excitement over school ending I almost forgot about my chrysalis collection.  I hadn't had to feed the caterpillars, so didn't think about them. I happened to be driving by school one evening and thought I should check on them.  Low and behold, when I gazed into the jar, I saw a very dark chrysalis indeed. I kept vigil until midnight and then couldn't keep my eyes open a second longer.

Early Sunday morning I woke to find a brand new creation!  I am amazed at the transformation that takes place from egg to butterfly.  This beautiful creature has to go through a whole lot of ugly to become this...

Have you ever had to go through some ugly times?  Are those times transforming you into something beautiful?  I won't bore you with some of the ugliness I've had to go through and I'm not saying I'm a butterfly now.  I will say that the ugly times in my life have never been wasted.  The ugly times in my life have helped me become more compassionate, sensitive and aware of the hurt other people struggle with on a daily basis. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.^[a] The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." 2 Corinthians 5:17
If you don't like what you see now...Wait, because God who began a good work in me is still at work changing and metamorphosizing me daily!

I'm stuck inside getting ready to move to a new house, but I'd rather be birding!