The dog days of summer are when I see things happen in my garden. Even though the dog days this year have seemed more like an early fall onset to me, some things just never change. Every year in mid August I watch the Monarch butterflies ascend on my Milkweed patch. This year they were slow in arriving. I had noticed that there seemed less pollinators this year: fewer honey bees, hardly any wasps, no yellow jackets. The only pollinators I saw frequently in my garden were bumble bees. I was questioning the absence of the Monarch butterflies when I read that they had been added to the endangered species list!
The next day I jumped into action when I saw my first Monarch butterfly for the season in my Milkweed patch. I inspected each leaf by twisting it over to check out the underside of it, as this is where Monarch butterflies lay their eggs. I was not disappointed when I discovered a few eggs. I had found more than enough information on the internet to help me, so I picked the leaves and placed them in a plastic container lined with a moist paper towel. The container became known as incubation nursery.
Next I went on the hunt for newly hatched caterpillars and caterpillars up to half and inch in length. The way I found these was to carefully check out each leaf for tiny half-moon shaped holes. Looking closely and wearing my reading glasses, I was able to discover about 6 of these caterpillars. I placed them in the nursery - a plastic container lined with moist paper towel and the leaves with caterpillars on added. Both of the nursery containers had tight fitting lids, which I opened once a day to check on the eggs and caterpillars.
Then I also started to discover some larger caterpillars munching on the Milkweed plants. These needed to be rescued as well, but would need more space and freedom. What to do? I watched a video on YouTube and built a butterfly house with help from my husband, using a large cardboard box, duct tape, screen fabric, a box cutter and a glue gun. I called it our JOY project. We added a door to the side to enable us to clean the frass (caterpillar poop) and replenish the milkweed each day. We covered the bottom of the box with a sheet of plastic and old newspaper sheets. The Milkweed was placed into an old heavy mug that was covered in Press and Seal (to prevent the frass and caterpillars from falling into the water) with a slit for the milkweed to fit through and water added.
I had no idea that this JOY project would become such a fulfilling past time, and in a sense contribute as a symbolic token to what was about to happen in our life!
Each day we watched as eggs hatched, caterpillars ate, caterpillars grew. Finally a day came, when one caterpillar crawled up to the ceiling of the box. He literally hung himself upside down! He started curling up into a J-shape and he just hung there. The next morning he was a chrysalis: a light green waxy shell with gold spots that sparkled! We were thrilled! Now the wait started. When would the butterfly emerge?
In the mean time life went on in the rest of the nurseries and the butterfly house. We lost a few caterpillars who went to hang themselves upside down and then just died without forming a chrysalis. We lost two caterpillars who just curled up and turned black and died. It saddened us, but we knew we had given them a chance. However, overall the caterpillars thrived by munching and growing. Eggs were hatching and baby caterpillars were developing. More chrysalides were forming. Our JOY project was flourishing!
In the process of bringing nature indoors and making sure we were careful not to spread diseases or contaminating anything, we rinsed each milkweed stalk thoroughly before adding it to the butterfly house. The plastic nurseries were also cleaned out well with soap and hot water after replacing the moistened paper towel every other day. We never touched the caterpillars, but only used rinsed leaves to transfer them from the nursery to the butterfly house once they were about an inch long.
One morning I noticed that the chrysalis of our very first caterpillar was changing. It was becoming darker! At first I was concerned, but then I realized that it was actually becoming transparent and the dark color was actually due the orange and black wings of the Monarch starting to show through the chrysalis. Now we really watched closely for when it would emerge.
We missed the first butterfly's struggle of eclosion from the chrysalis! I had just walked away and told Kevin that I thought the butterfly was ready to show itself. When I returned a few minutes later, the butterfly was hanging upside down on the bottom of the empty chrysalis. I was excited to have watched the whole cycle, sans eclosion, but sad that I had missed this very special event. However, looking at the ceiling of the butterfly house, I realized that I was most probably going to have the opportunity to observe another eclosion soon.
We were hooked on our JOY project! We would text each other how many new eggs had hatched, how many caterpillars were getting ready to "hang themselves" and how many new chrysalides had formed on the ceiling. It seemed like this project was energizing our conversations and preparing us for our own marriage metamorphosis that was about to happen:
We had signed up for a marriage intensive with Healing of the Heart Ministries for a week of Biblical mentorship. The marriage intensive first seemed like a marathon of sorts. We had three hour sessions each morning, after which we were sent home with homework and DVDs to watch. Somehow this whole process seemed reminiscent of our JOY project's Monarch butterfly life cycle. The first day it seemed like we were freshly hatched baby caterpillars, just clinging on to the Milkweed leaves for dear life. The leaf they had to eat seemed huge and unconquerable - the work we had to do seemed too much and insurmountable to complete. Each day we would chew our way through not only the three hour session with our mentors, but the DVDs and the homework as well.
Watching the caterpillars, I had sometimes seen them take breaks and just sit on the leaf resting. Now I finally understood why they needed to rest when they got bigger. They were full! They needed time to absorb what they had eaten. It was the same for us. By day three we were worn out from all the growth and changes happening in our relationship and in us individually. We slept for two hours after having lunch that day! Better yet, when we woke up, we wanted total change and freedom. We were ready to crawl to the ceiling and "hang ourselves", just like the monarch caterpillars. We had come to the end of ourselves and wanted a new beginning.
That night, we curled up back to back and fell asleep knowing that we would wake up changed from the big caterpillars into sleek chrysalides. Not only would we not be able to move on our own anymore as chrysalides, but something inside us would change us into something even more marvelous.
How does this amazing transformation called metamorphosis even happen? It is inexplicable, because it is something God created in his unfathomable creativity. The Holy Spirit living inside of each saved and converted Christian, brings about that same change when we have teachable and repentant hearts. When we allow Him to heal our hearts and do the necessary surgery to change us and make us new, we truly become new creations.
This is just what we experienced in that week of our marriage intensive! We woke up on day four and He was moving inside each of us individually. But He was also bringing about enormous change in our marriage. Both of us were still enclosed each in our own chrysalis. The amazing thing is that we started to see glimpses of who the other one really was going to become, because the chrysalides we were in, were getting more and more transparent!
By the end of our three hour session on day five, two brand new individuals had emerged from their chrysalides. We looked new and felt new! We felt like butterflies and wanted to soar. We found freedom and had left all the restraints from our past behind. The true miracle is that our marriage had also been reborn. We had gone through a total radical metamorphosis. Our JOY project had come full circle!
God's blessings until next time!
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