Therapy

Some of you know that while I love sharing the story of our life with our friends and family, I keep this blog as much for me. To help me remember the sweet moments of our life that fly away so quickly. And to help me work through the struggles and emotions of daily life. My cheap form of therapy. Today is one such entry.

Spring is fully here, and with it comes an abundance of new life. Today the Ortega household has been in discovery mode, enjoying the arrival of new creatures. As we were playing in the backyard, Miguel noticed something crawling up the window screen. I pointed out that it was a caterpillar, just like the one on the beginning of his Baby Einstein shows. He was fascinated. We watched as it crawled up the window, over the door, along the patio, and around the side of the house. He poked it at one point, causing it to stop. We talked about being gentle with caterpillars, because they are small. Fortunately, the critter started moving again, and wiggled to safety.

Fast forward to this evening, when Miguel was outside for one last lap around the backyard. After a little while, the back door burst open, and Miguel hurried in, with a worried look, and cupped hands. "Need to fixed it", he told me again and again, as he passed me the now motion-less caterpillar. My heart sunk as I looked in his face, and tried to tell him that the caterpillar was broken. "Mommy fix it", he urged. I took his hands, and told him again, that we have to be careful with caterpillar. Now he was broken, and we can't fix it.

Perhaps it is pregnancy hormones that made this such a poignant moment, but I felt a deep wave of sadness. Not as a lover of caterpillars, though I do feel sorry for the little guy. But to see the confusion in my boy's eyes, knowing that he truly did not mean to hurt the creature, but was exploring in the only way he knows. To realize that this is the first of many, many things that Mommy will not be able to fix.

How do I explain death to my son, who struggles to understand so many basic things? How can I help him see that life is so fragile, we must never take it for granted? These are things that even as an adult I do not always understand or remember. How do I handle the hurt of knowing that I can't make life easy for the one I love so much?

For everything there is a fixed time, and a time for every business under the sun. A time for birth and a time for death; a time for planting and a time for uprooting;....He has made everything right in its time; but he has made their hearts without knowledge, so that man is unable to see the works of God, from the first to the last.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-2,11.

Maybe this is a time when I am not supposed to know what to do. For when I have all of the answers (as I seem to believe I usually do!), I rarely stop to ask God for help. As the author of Ecclesiastes reminds us, there is a reason God did not give us the scripts for our lives. I don't know the fullness of His plan, merely that He does have one. Perhaps this can be taken as a gentle reminder to lean on God, and let Him take charge of the little boy that He has shared with me. It doesn't bring back the little caterpillar, and does not completely erase the sadness. Yet there is hope.

As I begin an entry such as this, I seldom know what the end result will be. So thank you for bearing with me, gentle readers. When I sat down to write, I was full of lament. Of sadness at the look on Miguel's face, and the knowledge that he truly did not understand that he had killed the caterpillar. But, through the wonder that is God, I now have a completely different take on the story. He reminded me that Miguel is my very own caterpillar. We are struggling along, and trying to learn. Things are certainly not easy, and probably never will be. But with a lot of patience, and laughter, and tears, and prayers, God is waiting to turn Miguel into a lovely butterfly.