Late Bloomer

I opened the front door and was reaching for the screen door when I saw something fall to the ground. A cardboard box. I picked it up.

"Jessica! Bethany! There's something here for you. I think it's your caterpillars."

The girls came running. Sure enough, inside the box were 5 tiny caterpillars, just like the order form had promised.

"I don't know if they'll live," I said. "There's no telling how long they were out in the cold."

By the next day, it was easy to see that all 5 caterpillars were, indeed, alive. And apparently very hungry. They started to grow... and grow... and grow. At first we could barely see them, but after a couple of weeks, they were almost 2 inches long and, as Jessica observed, hairy and a little creepy.

A week ago, they started jockeying for position on the jar lid. "Me first! No me!" Four fat caterpillars anchored themselves to the lid and set to work shedding their skin and forming their chrysalises. One didn't do a good job of anchoring and fell in his sleeping bag to the floor.

"He's dead," said Tabitha, matter of factly.

"Maybe." I said. "Maybe not. We'll wait and see."

"Why doesn't that one want to be a butterfly?" she asked. One of the caterpillars was still roaming around.

"He will," I said. "He just might be a day or two behind."

He's more than a day behind. It's been 7 days since the other 4 went dormant and that fat, spiky dude is still wandering around. He likes to push the others while they're hanging there.

"Nanny, nanny, boo boo!" he seems to say. "I get to play and you don't!"

We've taken to calling him Late Bloomer, as a name, not a description. I'm starting to wonder if he ever will do what it takes to become a butterfly. Will he live out God's intention for his life?

It makes me think-- now this might be a stretch-- but it makes me think about people. How we often want to run around and have fun. How we don't want to be still, we don't want to change, we don't want to give up what we are to become something completely different, completely unknown. We think that we have freedom, but we'll never know real freedom because we don't do what it takes to grow wings that we could soar free with... if only.

I'll keep you posted on Late Bloomer. There still may be hope for him. Each in his own time.