Secret Garden.

We took the kids to the Pacific Science Center in Seattle the other day.  What a cool place to go! giant, old animatronic dinosaur exhibit, planetarium, live spiders and scorpions. But my most favorite part of the whole thing was our very last stop: The Butterfly House. I have never experienced such a magical and breath-taking site in all my life, as I did in this delightful garden. I wish I could have stayed all day. The whole thing is set up kind of like a greenhouse full of exotic plants and many species of butterflies that we would never see flitting around the northwest. It was also a welcoming tropical climate vacation from the chilly February temperatures we're seeing. Watching the flurry of rainbow-colored, silent winged creatures dancing through the air, pausing for a moment on my daughter's skirt and my shoulder, I felt a tremendous sense of the power of God's infinitely creative hand. The Author of the galaxies, the One who stirs the sea and tells the snow where to fall, with eyes ablaze as He rides His chariot made of clouds--It is this same God who cups His hands around a caterpillar and wills it to fly. And He thought of it all Himself! Awesome.





“Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you” -Nathaniel Hawthorne






This is the common blue Morphos butterfly. It had the most striking, irridescent blue coloring,and the black trim along the edges of it's wings made for such a visual piece of candy, I was mesmerized. I even got to watch one emerge from it's chryssalis in the special window pictured above.However, it was by far the most elusive. Out of about 15 or 20 attempted shots, this was about the best and close I could come. Ah well, I took the picture in my mind, at least. :)



Grief.

A childhood friend of mine would have turned 25 yesterday. It has been 4 years since we all abruptly said goodbye. The road to actually letting go, however, is a long one, and my feet still seem to tarry there. Sorrow rolls through in waves, the same way the rush of joy can envelope and relieve you. I don't like to think about death. I hate it. I fear it. I know I'm not supposed to. But my flesh clings to that fear like my life depends on it. I feel like I'm trying to fully grasp the concept of  not "grieving as those who have no hope," as the Good Book admonishes. But it's difficult to grieve with hope for the unseen. Sometimes I sense in my spirit that I have reconciled myself unto this truth: that God is waiting on the other side, that our loved ones don't just disappear forever when they die. Other days, I fight off the anxiety that maybe this is all there really is. No, I am not turning my heart from God's promises of eternal life and all of that. But when the accumulation of religious phrases and whimsical church concepts meet the hot asphalt of reality, I don't want to simply attempt to soothe my aching heart with a conciliatory nod toward loss and pain. That does not resolve the tension. That does not draw me closer to Jesus. On the contrary, after losing Benji, it was brought to my attention that I had not truly been working out my own salvation. I realized in those fragile few hours of mustering the faith to pray for healing, that I would only trust God if He behaved in a way that was acceptable for me--this was NO faith at all! When the tears and prayers seemed to run right into the ceiling, my Jesus-box was shattered. It was as if the Reset button was pressed on my spiritual life. Truly embracing grief, in the slow incremental stages of it, I found myself conversing with The Lord, seeking His real comfort and "peace beyond comprehension", and allowing it to seep into those narrow spaces of pain and confusion. Hanging on to bitterness and fury will never ressurect a person from the dead. But for once in my life, I felt a release to be completely honest with Jesus, to be spitting mad and angry and disappointed and human and, and...and then to collapse in a heap at His feet, where His loving arms would scoop me up and let me quietly, humbly, weep in His presence. Sometimes, even though we long for there to be answers to the hardest things in life, God responds in the way that calms our tumultous hearts and briefly brings an end to the quandaries:
"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose."-Rom.8:28...ALL THINGS!