A furry caterpillar sneaked into my house tonight. All brown fuzz and reticulation, he was crawling on my kitchen floor when I scooped the fellow (or madame) up and took him outside into the cold night.{On a piece of paper, of course, I'm not making contact with that thing.}
He sort of poked around and squished up his body, as caterpillars do, and then I flipped the paper over and he took a dive-bomb over the deck railing and into the shadows.
I felt kind of bad for dumping him. I'm sure he was shocked when he hit the ground below.
I thought to myself : "Caterpillars are made to fall."
And they are, if you think about it. They are very well equipped to fall off leaves and branches onto the unfriendly earth below. Their squishy bodies are custom made for impact.
Sort of like our squishy souls.
We all fall from great heights, languishing in the dark until we have the strength to get up again.
There are days when the getting up is hard for me. I roll around on the proverbial ground, moaning about the terrible lot that is my life. Dishes and laundry and wiping up sticky stuff. It's pretty awful.
Okay, so not really. It's pretty dang good.
There are rainy days and sadness, there are lonliness and tears, there is shadow and darkness. Just like anyone else.
But I'm equipped for it. Resiliency, some call it. Stubbornness maybe. An innate ability to forget the pain and remember the pleasure.
After all, caterpillars are made to fall, but they are also made to fly.
At some point we must break free of the chrysalis to stretch our wings, warm ourselves beneath the Son, and take flight. Once free, we can drift on the the currents of life, preen on the pinnacles, and get caught in the heavy winds of change.
We are creatures of beauty. Reflective, original, glorious to behold. True works of glory beneath our Father's hand.
"Some would say the most magnificent sight they have ever beheld is looking heavenward on a summer night, seeing stars beyond number dotting the sky. Some might choose the view of the Grand Canyon at sunrise; others, the beauty of a mountain lake. Some might select a peacock with its tail in full fan, or a hummingbird seemingly suspended in midair while feeding. These magnificent sights are wondrous beyond measure. They are all “great deeds” of our divine Creator.
Now, ponder the magnificence of what you see when you look in the mirror. Ignore the freckles, the unruly hair, or the blemishes, and look beyond to see the real you—a child of God—created by him, in his image. If we lift the lid on the treasure chest of the marvelous attributes of our bodies, we can discover, at least in part, the magnificence of man."
"The Magnificence of Man" Russell M. Nelson-----
Sarah is a Stay at Home Mom on the brink of being an All Day At School Learning Mom. She lives somewhere close to the middle of New Mexico in a perpetual State of Obvious with her husband and two children. She spends most of her time pinching her children's cheeks and eating chocolate.furry caterpillar image found here
