An Anniversary and a Butterfly

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First thing this morning, as if in celebration of our four year anniversary, we found a newly hatched female Black Swallowtail butterfly, ready to go out into the world of flowers and flight.

If you had told me four years ago today that I would be in south Texas, kissing the cheeks of the sweet grandmotherly greeters at church, understanding more and more meaning in each sermon in Spanish, growing okras and watermelons and learning to eat prickly pears, I don't know if I would have believed you.

Life takes us unexpected places, doesn't it?

Yet through all the unexpected life places I've been in the last four years (because from starting graduate school to learning a new language, ALL the places I've been since that May 31 in 2010 have been unexpected), I'm more glad than ever to share my life with a man who has the sweetest heart and the truest unfailing integrity.

Texas Spotted Whiptail

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I'd like you to meet one of my new South Texas friends, who I'm quite sure is called a Texas Spotted Whiptail.  This little guy and his buddies scurry around my garden every morning when I go out to visit the plants (i.e., water them, pollinate them, and pull the weeds around them).  While everyone else dives for the shade in the afternoon sun, these fellows stay out soaking it all in.

He's quick on his feet, but sometimes when I startle him (I'm much taller than he is, after all), he slides a little as he scurries across the sidewalk seeking shelter underneath the next blooming bush.

These delightful garden companions don't always get along with each other, though.  Once, two of them were so intent on chasing each other that they didn't even have time to notice me.  When they ran into my flip flop, it was my turn to be startled!

One Plant Standing Tall: On Perseverance in the Garden

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I couldn't begin to tell you how many amaranth varieties and seeds we've started this spring, only to watch them get eaten by some mysterious pest, or simply not grow to their expected height of glory.  

Except this one.  Yes, only one is really standing tall, growing the way it should.  But this one is well above knee high now, and although it isn't budding yet, it's a healthy beauty.  We're loving the maroon tones on the leaves, and its graceful new growth at the tips.

This one lone plant promises to be worth all the starting and re-starting.  Of course we would've loved seeing ten or fifteen plants looking like this, but this one is occupying its space with decided charm, adding its loveliness to the entire garden scene.  

Which reminds me of something my dad told me once:  Never underestimate the influence one person can have.  

So persevere. In excellence, in high moral standards, in doing the right thing, in working hard, even when you feel like you're the only one.  You never know how the graces of your beautiful strong character will bless those who behold your blossoming life.

And if you're the gardeners?  You need perseverance, too, just like the plants do.  Keep feeding that garden soil.  Get as much compost as you can.  The more you feed the soil, the more it will feed the plants.  The healthier your plants, the better they'll be at resisting the pests.  Care for the plants you have, even if not very many seem to be doing as well as you'd like.  Meanwhile, keep planning for the needs of the next crop as well.

Then try again.  Plant another crop of amaranths during that delightful thing we in South Texas call the fall garden season, and watch for an improved showing.  Perhaps in the fall, there will be an abundant new generation of all things amaranth.

Home-Made Lincoln Logs

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The other day after a piano student sibling had spent the lesson time playing with some of my toys, I got to thinking how great a treasure I really have sitting over there in my guest room.  Yep.  Home-made Lincoln Logs.

My dad made them before I can remember, and they were always a household staple.  

Which is why I rescued them from being given away after my parents' latest move, and began carting them around the country myself in that great trunk my dad and I found together at a thrift store.  You just don't give away the Lincoln Logs your dad made.

I asked him the other day why he decided to make his own Lincoln Logs, and he simply said, "The regular ones never had enough pieces, so I just thought it would be nice to have a set with plenty of everything."

That's my family, all right, always having bigger building dreams than the little box of store-bought Lincoln Logs will accommodate.

We do that with food, too.  When we're all in the kitchen making a mountain of a meal, someone inevitably worries there won't be enough food.  Then, as if in defense, one of us will say, "It takes too much to make enough."  Because if everything gets eaten, you don't know if everyone really got enough, of course.

Didn't that saying get handed down from generation to generation in your family?

But back to the Lincoln Logs.  I didn't expect him to tell me he had never finished making the set, and that's why he had thought of giving them away before I rescued them--an unfinished project he wasn't sure he'd get around to finishing after twenty-five years.  The roofing pieces, for example.  

It never once occurred to me the roofing pieces were missing, but if he ever decided to make some, I'd be in full support.

Meanwhile, I'll keep building big dreams and beautiful Lincoln Log cabins, dreaming  well outside your average store-bought box, just like my dad taught me to do.

Peace at the Door: Living Free from Fear

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Opening the door, he stood face to face with a man on the verge of a killing spree.

The captain's bound by law to do it, of course, simply obeying the orders of an irate king.  Yet the young man standing just inside the door, face to face with death--not for the first or last time--calmly, wisely, simply says, "Why?"

Wouldn't you love to be that unruffled by fear, anxiety, stress, trials, bills to pay, illnesses, and deadlines?  

If I were the king's captain, who was gone forth to slay all the wise men of Babylon, I would have been a little surprised.  If I were Arioch, I probably wouldn't be accustomed to being questioned, but especially not politely and calmly when I've just said, "I'm here to kill you."

I might be even more amazed when the young man said, "Oh, wait on that command from your king.  We Hebrews know a God who can solve this."  I'd stand in awe, watching him hurry over to the palace, gain an audience with the king, and after everyone else has failed in offering every excuse and begging for their lives, secure a precious window of time to work on the king's mystery.

The song "Dare to be a Daniel" takes on new and deeper meaning, doesn't it?

I don't know everything that's outside your door right now, about to knock, about to threaten your life.  I do know the same God who was there for Daniel is out there pushing everything else aside to get the first chance to knock on your heart-door, willing to give you the same calm and courage Daniel had when death knocked on his door.

But back to the story.  There's a ton we could say about everything that happens in Daniel 2 (it's world history in 49 verses or less, after all), we'll just stick with one thing for today.

Daniel and his three buddies, unified in their prayers and purpose, saved not only their own lives, but the lives of the other guys who failed the king.  

There were four groups of them:  the magicians, the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the sorcerers.  Their magic arts were an empty sham, and the king could still have done away with them because they didn't come through for him.  But because of Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, their lives also were spared.

Which lends a maddening sting to the story in the next chapter, where Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refuse to worship the image of gold.

It's Nebuchadnezzar's attempt to re-predict history to the end of time, setting himself up as the kingdom that will never be destroyed, even though he knows from his very recent dream of the image and its interpretation that other nations will rise after him, all ultimately superseded by God's everlasting kingdom.  

With the image of gold, he's setting himself above the Most High God as if he could make himself live for ever, and it's not the image itself people are commanded to worship after all, but Nebuchadnezzar himself.

Among those gathered together for the image's dedication are a group of Chaldeans, possibly the very ones whose lives were just spared by Daniel's calm courage, his friends' faithful prayer support, and God's blessing of wisdom.

Although they owe their very lives to these Hebrew captives, they are the first to accuse, demanding that the king execute them on the spot.

These Chadleans are beyond ungrateful, unimaginably spiteful.  It doesn't appear from the text that Nebuchadnezzar would have even known about the three Hebrew men who stayed standing, except for the Chaldean tattlers.

Yet there is not one speck of evidence that it ruffled Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego even for a moment.  They're so bent on standing true to God even in the midst of a pagan ceremony that they hardly notice their accusers, or stop to remind them who just saved their lives.

Maybe that's what it really means to seek first the kingdom of heaven, to enjoy its peace that passes understanding.

To be so focused on defending God's name in a messed up and perverted world trying desperately to change the timeless truths of God's Word that we wouldn't even notice the threats and jabs of our enemies.

To be so constantly abiding in Christ's purity that our enemies have nothing against us but our faithfulness to heaven's king.

To be utterly convinced of our future hope, so that no arrow of Satan can shake our humble faith that God can save us, knowing that even if He does not (physically, anyway), no reward will entice us to betray our Lord.

Even when death comes knocking at the door.

Our Black Swallowtail Butterflies: A Timeline of Their Life Cycle

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Now that we've released three Black Swallowtail butterflies into the big wide world (and the second graders at school have released more than that), I thought it would be fun to look back over the time they've spent with us, and document the timeline from the egg discover to the first release.

We found the eggs and the first caterpillars on April 21, 2014.  (My post about it:  The Black Swallowtail Dilemma)

Since I read that only one in one hundred butterfly eggs makes it all the way to butterfly adulthood, we rescued the caterpillars from predators, sharing some with second grade and keeping a few protected at home.  We continued to watch their growth.  (My post about it:  Black Swallowtail Caterpillars)

It was more difficult than I expected to mark the transition between instar stages; we simply ended up enjoying watching them gradually change and grow.

By May 3, we had our first chrysalises.  Three were green, three were brown.  In the second grade classroom at school, my husband tells me the colors seemed to be location specific.  That is, all the green ones were on one type of terrain, and all the brown ones were on another.  (My post about it:  A Black Swallowtail Caterpillar Makes a Chrysalis {With Video})

On May 13, our first butterfly hatched!  From the day we found the first caterpillars and eggs, to the day of the first hatch, was three weeks and one day.  I let the beauty go out into the neighborhood on the morning of May 14.  (My post about it:  A Black Swallowtail Emerged)

So would we do it again?  Absolutely!  Even though it did end up ruining my best dill patch ever, the whole process has been a delight to watch.  In fact, we truly are doing this again.  The other day, my husband found the tiniest of caterpillars on a parsley plant out back, and we simply didn't have the heart to save the parsley.  Just one this time, so far, but he's already pretty fun to watch.

We'll try some more parsley and another dill patch come fall.

The Vine's Real Job

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I'm out there working in the garden one morning, carefully searching one vine for female flowers ready to be pollinated, tugging on another vine trying to get it loose from the fence where it shouldn't be growing at all.  One vine gets cheered on, tended carefully; the other ripped to shreds.  And it hits me.

If you're a vine, your job is to take over the world.

You might be a good vine, or you might be a bad vine, but either way, garden dominance is your one and only goal.  You want lots of flowers, lots of fruits, lots of seeds.  It's a big world, and you try to grow over it as fast as you can.

Jesus said, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.  Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit...I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing."  (John 15:1-3, 5)


So we are part of a vine, and we have a job to do, just like the watermelon vine in my garden.  Let's be sure we're attached to the true vine, and simply delight in the fast, steady growth that keeps pushing toward every unoccupied part of this world-garden we call our temporary home.  There are people who need the nourishing fruit only the true Vine can provide them.

And let's get the job done soon, so we can go to our real home, the city that has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.