Our caterpillar from this story

Tonight I had a big oops moment. Just before bedtime for my kids, I was enjoying our monarch caterpillars that we have and taking some pics of some chrysalises and a caterpillar that we have. I was holding the caterpillar and took it outside onto our deck to take some pics as I thought I might get a better pic there. I had taken 2 good pics and my son started to take it to put it back. I decided to take one more when the worst thing happened. I dropped it. I didn't just drop it on the deck, but of all the worst luck, it dropped through one of the cracks between two of the boards on our deck!

Our deck has trellis material all around the bottom of it so we couldn't instantly run to look for it. My husband does sometimes take it off to get things out but I wasn't sure if I wanted to ask him to get out the drill to take one off to look for a caterpillar in a dark location in the getting-dark evening. BUT I could see that my son wasn't going to take it well at all. He LOVES the caterpillars!

SO, I heard my son go in to ask my husband about taking off the trellis. I knew my husband was probably not in the mood for it so I went in and kind of gave him a look that showed him I felt really bad about it. I asked him if he could take it off for us to try to find it and went to find a flashlight. Thanks to my husband, he agreed and went to get the trellis off.

We stooped way down low (not much clearance under there) and made it over to the corner where the caterpillar had fallen through. Unfortunately we couldn't find it anywhere. My son was not happy about it.

A little bit later I went in to see him sitting sadly on a chair so I went over to him and asked him if we should pray that the caterpillar makes it and he said yes. We prayed together. It took quite a while of talking to him to get him to bed and asleep.

My main thoughts on this incident are this. Part of showing our love to our children is to care for what they care about. By caring for their feelings, even when in our eyes what they care about may seem silly, they know that we do truly love them. I could have just told him not to worry about it - we do have 10 chrisalises in our butterfly cage right now and still have one more caterpillar. But by going out of the way to try to look for it, I demonstrated that what was important to him was important, and therefore he is important to me. Even though I figured it would be very hard to find a small caterpillar in the semi-dark under the deck, the effort of caring for him and his feelings was more important than whether I thought the effort would be successful or not. Of course it was my fault this happened as well. When he looks back on the incident, he'll remember that I made a mistake and dropped the caterpillar, but he'll also remember that I cared enough for him and his feelings to go out of my way to do what I could for him.

I find that the more we say "yes" to our kids, the better. Sometimes it's very inconvenient to say "yes". Sometimes it may seem silly, or we may be busy or tired, but in saying "yes", we show that we care for them and are willing to serve them above our own wishes and desires.

I don't always respond so well in these situations, but was grateful to the Lord for this opportunity to show my son that I care for him. May the Lord grant us wisdom and strength in serving and loving our children.