Sunday, October 6, 2013

A China Plate for Butterfly

Recently, I surprised Butterfly with a mother/daughter date one beautiful Saturday morning. We headed to Lavender Fields Farm, a local organic herb garden, to take their wreath class. This particular class has turned out to be a requisite mother/daughter event for our family. I made my first wreath at LFF with my mom. About two years ago, my oldest daughter Lizard and I took the wreath class together (I blogged about that here) and now it was Butterfly's turn.

Like I desired with Butterfly's sister before her, I wanted to celebrate the completion of a devotional book we worked through together, Growing Little Women for Younger Girls, by Donna J. Miller and Christine Yount. In a sense, the event was intended to mark a graduation from little girl to young lady. Our first activity was to make living herb wreaths.









After making our wreaths, we entered the tea room where a special china place setting had already been laid at Butterfly's place setting. (The idea for this event came from the book, Gentle Passages: Guiding Your Daughter Into Womanhood, by Robin Jones Gunn)We talked about how she is like a china plate, meant to shine as she reflects God's glory through her life and her service to others. She agreed that she didn't want her life to resemble in any way my paper plate that was destined for the trash can. We discussed how a china plate is special and should be handled with care and it should be protected from harm. At this point, Butterfly exclaimed that she really understood now why her dad and I are careful in choosing what books, movies and activities she experiences.



The china set we bought for Butterfly is called Shenandoah. It has a delicate pink flower with a pale yellow background, two of Butterfly's favorite colors. Lizard and I selected it for Butterfly at a local antique shop some months ago. It turned out that many of the dishes in the set were covered with dust and grime, but I was delighted to find that their sparkle returned with the help of a sink full of soapy water and a bit of gentle elbow grease. As I was washing Butterfly's china, just a few days before our trip to LFF, I discovered that one of the dishes had a chip. I was disappointed and hoped that Butterfly, who wouldn't even know about the china until our special day, wouldn't even notice that particular dish for a long time.



Somehow, when I secretly and carefully packed up a single place setting of Butterfly's china into a picnic basket that I would later give to the staff at LFF to place at our table, I unknowingly packed that chipped plate. I was chagrined to have to acknowledge that imperfection when it was debuted to Butterfly. However, God made the moment beautiful, as we were led to discuss that even with a chip, the plate was still exquisite and able to serve. We decided that really, all of us are chipped plates. We make mistakes (lots of them), we do get hurt and sometimes we are even damaged, but if we ask Jesus to wash away our sins and allow Him to heal our hurts, we can again shine brightly for Him.

In many ways, Butterfly's china plate event mirrored her sister's event, but not in every way. Besides the chipped plate, there was one other surprise that set Butterfly's day apart. She was given a custom art print, made by a talented Christian artist who has a shop on Etsy called Willow of Wonder. The girl in the image is based on Butterfly. I suggested she wear the same dress the day of our event, because she was wearing that dress in the photo I sent to inspire J-- at Willow of Wonder. When Steady Man and I were working with J-- to select a scripture or song lyric for Butterfly's print, we decided to look at some of Chris Tomlin's lyrics, as he is one of Butterfly's favorite singers. Butterfly's pose, with arms lifted high, led us to choose "I lift my hands to believe again. You are my refuge, You are strength. As I pour out my heart, these things I remember. You are faithful God, forever!" We also felt this lyric reflected Butterfly's joyful personality well. I couldn't have been more pleased when Butterfly first laid eyes on her art print. She was ecstatic. She loved it. She realized it really was her and she was in disbelief that something so beautiful was made just for her. When she read the lyrics, she exclaimed, "That's my favorite song!" Well, we didn't realize that when we chose it and I told her so. Then she reminded me how she had once made up hand movements to that very song and then I remembered, and I silently thanked God for leading us to choose that song lyric.



On the back of Butterfly's plate, I wrote her a message and gave her a scripture. For this particular occasion, the NLT version reads best:

'In a wealthy home some utensils are made of gold and silver, and some are made of wood and clay. The expensive utensils are used for special occasions, and the cheap ones are for everyday use. If you keep yourself pure, you will be a special utensil for honorable use. Your life will be clean, and you will be ready for the Master to use you for every good work." II Timothy 2:20-21


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