Caterpillars and Dial-up Internet

Our WiFi was ridiculously slow last Wednesday. Baker looked at me and asked, “Is this what dial-up was like?”

Waiting is not something we are accustomed to, today. We are a society frequently defined by convenience and instant gratification.

On a seemingly unrelated (but I’ll tie it together...I promise) note...

A common random theme that has surrounded Baker over that past week has been butterflies. Everywhere he looks, from his morning devotional, to his reading work from school, to his science work from school, to our family walks, to our pastor’s sermon this morning, the theme of butterflies/caterpillars keeps popping up.

In my experience “random themes” tend to be God’s way of tapping us on the shoulder.

Let’s be real. When you see a caterpillar do you stand in awe of its beauty?

If one crawls across your back porch, do you take a picture? Do you stare with wonder at the grace with which it inches across the ground? What if one falls from the porch covering and lands on the side of your drink? Do you grab your phone for a selfie?

Or do you notice its awkwardness? Do you get a little queasy thinking about it landing in your sweet tea? Do you wonder if it’s one of those poison ones like you saw on Facebook?

Do you see its future state, or do you fixate on its current condition?

I see the caterpillar exactly as it is right now. “Don’t touch that!” I holler to my curious kids. It’s not welcomed on my drink, on my skin, or in my house. The stranger it looks, the more I fear the unknown. I don’t like it. It’s gross. It creeps me out.

These last few weeks have felt like that.

Like a big, fat, juicy, creature fell out of the sky and straight into our laps. The really weird looking kind...the slimy and spiky kind with fur and horns.

Like a whole rolling swarm (that’s the actual term!) of gross weirdness just came out of nowhere and took over.

We look at our current condition and it’s absolutely surreal.

What we forget, though, is that the end is far more beautiful than the beginning.

We are NOT meant to know when this all will end...so we can go back to business as usual.

We are meant to use this time to to draw closer to our families and our God.

The caterpillar becomes the butterfly that my son and daughter chase through the pasture as they giggle with delight and pray that one will land right on their heads. I grab my phone to take a picture. I post it on Instagram for the world to see.

It takes time.

It can’t be rushed or forced.

The metamorphosis is a delicate process.

And when we attempt to speed things along, we destroy the beauty that is intended to emerge.

The trash heap that seems to have befallen us all, WILL produce beauty...in His time.

That’s hard for us. We want God to operate with WiFi service when it feels like He’s operating through dial-up...or worse...a carrier pigeon.

His thoughts are not our thoughts. His perspective is not our perspective.

The end-beauty will not come through impatience and wondering when this will all end. The questions where we allow our mind to fixate, influence the peace in our hearts.

The beauty will come with our willingness to believe that what comes next is unimaginable beauty.

It comes with our willingness to ask what we can do with this time to glorify Him.

It will come with us asking what we can do to serve those around us.

It is time to wrap ourselves in the cocoon of His promise, pour out our love, and trust that we will emerge a new creation.

25Donna Rial-Baker, Sharron Hayward and 23 others

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