Gall Bladders, Babies, and Butterflies

Are you scratching your head at this title??? I would be, too, except for the fact that those three things have seemed to have become dominant topics in my life and in the lives of my family and friends. The first two are prayer requests and updates.

If you remember, my friend from school, Alicia Sharpton, has been on the list of prayer concerns for a few weeks now as she has been recovering from gall bladder surgery. I spoke with her today and she said that while she is still tired, she is feeling better and getting into a routine at school. She said that she wanted me to take her off the list to make room for others. So . . . I'm taking one gall bladder patient off and putting TWO on! Please pray for Grace Burris, who had surgery yesterday (8/19), and Don Crain, who will have surgery tomorrow (8/21). Grace, a first year music teacher, is the grown daughter of our Kindergarten teacher. This procedure (or should I say the timing of it) has been especially hard for Grace because this is the second week of her first year of teaching. She, like her mama, is very dedicated and she is extremely worried about her students and missing so much school so early in the year. Mr. Crain is the husband of our first grade teacher and is a little uneasy about this procedure because he is so healthy and has had very few procedures done in the past. Please pray for God's healing touch on both Grace and Mr. Crain.

Onto babies . . . I talked to my sister, Julie Roeder, yesterday and she is doing very well! She is about 9 weeks and the baby seems to be doing fine so far. She had an ultrasound and was able to see the baby and get the heartbeat which she said was about 180 bpm! She is due March 21st. Her three-year-old, Mallory, is very excited to become a big sister. She is also excited to be starting preschool next week. Please continue to pray for Julie and her husband Jon and little Mallory as they all prepare for baby Roeder. Pray for a safe, uneventful pregnancy and for a healthy, happy baby to come in March.

I promise this will be the last time I talk about butterflies, but so many of you were touched by the story of Johnny and June that I just had to blog about our experience in the classroom today. I took four caterpillars to school in a small aquarium for my class to watch. Unfortunately, they went into their cocoons shortly after school started. But today that didn't matter. After watching what happened with Johnny and June, I knew we had one that was about ready to come out of its cocoon so I had one of my students on "cocoon watch" today. Well at about 9:30 this morning we were reading an excerpt from The Little House in the Big Woods and we noticed the cocoon was wiggling a little. Well, wouldn't ya know, while we were standing there watching it wiggle, the cocoon split open, and that brand new butterfly came squirming out right before our eyes! My students and I saw the whole thing! I couldn't believe it! It was amazing! I took it down to show Alison's class and her teacher told me what I wanted to share with you tonight: She had heard that if you help a butterfly out of its cocoon, it'll never be able to fly. It needs to wiggle and squirm and struggle and push its way out of the cocoon for its wings to be strong enough to fly. Oooo. That gives me chill bumps now just to think about how closely it parallels with, not just the children that I teach, but all of us who have ever gone through a hardship. When we are faced with trials, we have to wiggle and squirm and struggle through it. Yes, we have those special people that we can turn to for advice or just for a comforting shoulder to lean on, but they cannot go through our trials for us. WE have to go through it and WE are stronger for it! And in the end, we find that WE CAN FLY!