Something Terrible, Something Enlightening

 
Yeah, it was a chock-full weekend. I'll start with the sad/bad stuff & end on a good note.
 
Friday evening I got off the bus at the usual time & took the walkway along the river back to the house. There were 5-7 older teenagers hanging out there, near where some graffiti is. I just walked past them, barely glancing at them, as I listened to a podcast on my iPhone. All the time, I'm thinking, "They're probably a gang, probably going to do more graffiti. I wonder what would happen if I took a picture of them with my iPhone? But I don't want to cause trouble. Just walk on by."
 
So I get off the path, cross the main street to get to mine when I hear, "pop! pop! pop!" I turn & think, is it a gun? No, probably just firecrackers; the kids are probably horsing around like kids do.
 
Well, the next evening, I read on a local website that it was actually a gang-related murder!
 
So, using the police's anonymous tip website, I put down what I saw & heard. I hope it helps. When I first read it, I was bowled over. To think I had just walked down that path! Then the next day during church, I was convicted to walk down that path & pray through it. (Taking my doggy with me, of course!) But there has been increasing vandalism & graffiti in that area prior to this & I'd never prayed about it before; I figured it was high time that someone do so. So now, when I walk down the path, I "paint it with prayer" & leave it in God's hands (and the police's).
 
That's the bad. The sad thing (which is nothing in comparison) is that the Patriots lost the Super Bowl. Yeah, it was a close game, but I was hoping they'd avenge their last loss to the Giants. Oh, well.The good thing was a realization that I came to during church. It's all in connection with my post about "being on a journey", some of what Leslie Vernick talked about in her webinar & has everything to do with my perfectionistic tendencies. The speaker in church spoke about Romans 12 & one of the points he talked about was "being transformed." He said that the Greek word for this was the same word from which we get "metamorphosis."
 
Which got me to thinking about the metamorphosis of a butterfly. At no point during the metamorphosis process is the caterpiller/pupa/butterfly imperfect or insufficient or "not enough". It is exactly as it is supposed to be at that point in the process. At no point can anyone say, "Well, you're not a butterfly, so you're no good." It is on the continuum to becoming a butterfly; it will reach its ultimate state. And in the meantime, the state that it's in is exactly what it's supposed to be.
 
I suppose you can also compare this to childhood development. You can't expect a child to be as reasonable, coordinated, physically & intellectually developed as an adult. At certain point during the child's growth, they reach certain milestones; sometimes early, sometimes late. But the milestones are reached; the child is developing. Eventually, the child becomes an adult.
 
But has the adult "arrived"? No, there are still many areas of growth. There are studies that show that the middle-aged brain goes through as much synaptic/learning growth as a teenage brain--kind of like a 2nd growth spurt mentally, if you will. That says something!