The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

After my walk, I stopped at the pear tree to pick a few stranglers. I used my t-shirt as a make-shift gathering basket, and when I glanced down after one slipped from my grasp, I saw the monarch butterfly at my feet.

It was feeding on a rotting pear that had fallen from the branches. Even a pear barreling toward it didn't move it from the sweet treat. The sweet nectar had also attracted a bevy of other marauders. Even with the striking orange and black of the majestic butterfly poised there, I couldn't get past the ugly insects, despite the green iridescence on paper-thin wings.

I'd seen another butterfly float on the wind currents as I'd walked down the road earlier, but it didn't sit still for a close-up. Arrrgh, I thought! Why couldn't it have perched on a branch or found a flower from which to draw its sustenance? Who wants to look at a rotting pear and dirty flies, even when they have a beautiful visitor in their midst? Certainly not me!

It finally lighted on a leaf long enough that I could snap a more pleasing fall portrait, complete with green pear leaves and a yellow cottonwood leaf. I could still hear the buzzing of the ravenous insect world, chowing down on the rotting fruit, but I could ignore it through the view finder, focusing instead on the stained-glass-like traits of the royal butterfly as it paused before migrating on.

So what's the message? Should I be overlooking the "ugly"? Or is it more honest to report the bad with the good? Nobody has a Perfect 10 day all the time, but I tend to report the more positive spin on life, rather than focusing on the negative.

I saved an email devotional awhile back. It said: 

The only difference

between stumbling blocks and stepping stones

 is the way in which we use them.

 –Anonymous

Taken in Yellowstone National Park - 2011

So maybe it is better to see the stepping stones and the butterflies in life, even when they come disguised as stumbling blocks or complete with pesky flies.

A Time to Pray (also from the devotional):

God, just for today, let me see only the good.
Give me the eyes of faith, the heart of hope.

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I'm linked today to Jennifer Dukes Lee's Tell His Story feature on her blog. Click on the link to check it out!