Moments in Grace

My momma always told me, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” Yeah, well, I guess lately I’ve taken that to heart. I haven’t been able to write, to talk, to process much because the ugly truth is, I think I’ve been afraid if I opened my mouth, not too much nice was going to come out.   The ugly truth is, sometimes you can struggle through and put on a brave smile and hold back the spewing lava behind your eyes but it still burns you up from the inside.   It still burns.   Bitterness never leads to betterness. And here I am, this very, very pregnant mama, pregnant with this seventh baby, skin splitting ready,   any day now, ready, and feeling very unready to actually deliver this most precious cargo into the light of this broken world.   Maybe it’s because I’ve spent the last nine months contemplating whether his delivery day will be my dying day.   And sure, I shouldn’t be thinking those thoughts, I shouldn’t be focusin...

So these kids of mine bring me a caterpillar in a jar, munching fall leaves, fat and striped.   He is munching, perched on a thin stick they have placed in the jar.   “Oh, look at that!”   the little ones exclaim. “Can we keep him, Mom?” “No, he has to go back outside so he can get ready for winter.   Caterpillars have to eat lots of leaves and get ready for their transformation into a butterfly.” “You mean he is going to become a butterfly?” “Yes, he will spin a cocoon and sleep all winter and in the spring he will hatch out as something completely new, a butterfly.” “Can’t we keep him just one day in the jar, so we can watch him?” “I guess but in the morning you have to let him go.” But by morning, he had spun himself into that dark cocoon hung by a silver thread to the dark wood.   He was already hidden and waiting for his change, his new life to begin. The girls had first found the caterpillar in my neighbor’s yard.   My neighbo...