My family and I were playing in a creek in the mountains, when something caught my eye…
I’ve always had a love-affair with butterflies, and the familiar black and gold of the Monarch made me stop and take a second look.
As I looked closer, I noticed that it was oddly still, even though still beautiful. It was then that I realized that it was dead – just a beautiful shell of something that once used its wings to soar…
I’ve photographed many butterflies because, like I said, I love them; But this one, although still as brilliant in color and design, just wasn’t breathtaking like all the others. Something was missing.
What was missing was what it was created to do! It could no longer take flight…
I think that’s how I’ve often felt: like a butterfly who can’t take flight…
and isn’t such a creature just…pointless?
Over the span of my life, I’ve tried many things to “soar”; I’ve attempted to fly high as the “perfect” daughter, wife, mother, Christian…
Yet, no matter what I tried to do, I still often felt worthless…different.
I even began to believe that maybe there’s only a place in this world for the “perfect” butterflies…maybe only they are able to soar!
I saw other butterflies, several actually, the very next day – one different from the next.
They were all beautiful, but one caught my eye for a special reason: one of its wings was torn. It was a “broken butterfly”, but it was flitting about right next to the most “perfect” butterflies you could ever see.
It didn’t even seem to notice that it was different…
It just seemed content – perhaps, because it was still alive….still doing what it was born to do –
because it had survived whatever had torn its wing.
And it reminded me that I truly wasn’t made for this world – a world full of evil and abuse. I was, as all of us were, made to live in The Garden to love and fellowship with God.
I was not meant to have to endure being “broken”.
But perhaps the answer to the question of how to soar lies in the overcoming…not in perfection.
Some have said that in our brokenness we can become even more beautiful. I suppose this is true, depending on our response to our pain. After the grieving and the acceptance…and even after the anger, can come a strength that the “perfect” butterflies of this world will never grasp or understand.
I guess the point of this post is to remind myself and others that, until we truly are dead – in the ground – no matter how imperfect and even broken we seem – we can still soar!
There’s a strength gained in survival that “perfection” can never duplicate.
Peace.
Angie Bledsoe 