New life

I think God's timing is simply amazing, for bazillions of reasons I am not going into right now. One though, just happened this morning. A little background:

Back in the fall, as I was cleaning out the herb garden, I found a few caterpillars on my dying parsley plants. I knew a cold snap was coming, so brought them in and put them in a butterfly house we had been given for Isaac's birthday. We fed them well and within days, the two caterpillars made chrysalises. They wintered over, and miraculously, one did turn into a butterfly and we released it in February. After a sad week of grieving for our friends' loss, Abigail came running through the house this morning, as we were getting ready for church, shouting, "Mom! Mom! You won't believe this!"She was right - I hardly believed her when she told me the second caterpillar chrysalis we've been waiting on for months had hatched a beautiful swallowtail. We assumed that this one was dead in the chrysalis, but just couldn't bring ourselves to throw it out. Then, today, it shed that old life, and was released in our yard. What an encouraging moment for all of us. I'm so thankful for spring, and the signs of life all around us. They give us such hope in hard times. I pray you'll see that hope everywhere you look this week!!