Bounding after butterflies

I love summer.  I mean I LOVE summer!!!  Tank top, shorts, bare feet, sitting on my deck.  Maybe reading, maybe doing nothing at all other than thawing out from a hard winter and stocking up on sun and warmth for the next one.

Which is what I was doing over the weekend – except that I had that bane to modern existence in my hands: my cellphone.

I needed to find something for a small storage shed and could not for the life of me locate what I needed anywhere on the web.  And I had spent a lot of time looking.  Way too much time, especially given I was on my deck and should have been enjoying the sun instead of getting irritated with online shopping.

Then I caught something dark out of my peripheral vision and looked up as a small butterfly gently floated down and landed less than a foot away from me.  It lazily opened its wings and soaked up the heat from the sun.

I closed the web window on my phone, opened the camera app, and slowly turned the phone 90 degrees so I could photograph the butterfly.  It sat there for 1-2 minutes which is unheard for a butterfly and I sat quietly next to it, just enjoying it being so close.

The butterfly eventually flew off…and left me contemplating.

I often feel like I take off like that, running on ahead of God like a child ahead of a parent, when it’d be in my best interest if I just walked next to Him and let him lead.  That butterfly made me wonder about that image though.  What if it is the other way around?  Maybe I’m the adult – the too busy, present-minded-elsewhere, jaded adult who can’t see the blessings right in front of her.  All around her.  I just keep walking right past them.

While God is the more childlike of the two of us, running off ahead of me.  But He’s running forward to point out all the beauty I so frequently miss.

“Carrie! Look at this!”

He runs to my right. “And look at these!”

Running past me to the left, He says, “And what about this one?  Did you see this one?  That one I made just for you.”

All day long he effortlessly bounds from one beautiful thing to the next, one amazing gift after another.

If only I’d look.

If only I’d bound around with Him, oohing and ahhing… stepping on a thistle sometimes, grabbing a thorny rose… but not letting them become my whole focus.

Thistles and thorns exist. They hurt and require attention.

But not all of my attention.