The Butterfly Effect

While so many of the animals are moving to higher elevations because of the warmer temperatures, I always see a butterfly on every hike--regardless of how high I've climbed. Seeing them always makes my mind jump to Sarah and Rachel Dunn from reading the Fancy Nancy series with Sarah's favorite "Azure Butterflies" and even books like Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We all know this classic picture book with the caterpillar who spends six days eating. I honestly don't see any problems with that idea right now :) He eats oranges, pears, and plums, and then chocolate cake, ice cream, and pickles. On his seventh day, the very hungry caterpillar eats a single green leaf before spinning a cocoon and separating himself from the world. Finally, the shell of the cocoon begins to crack and a beautiful butterfly is spread across both pages of the book.

All these butterfly stories always make me start thinking about growth. Butterflies are a very cliche example of undergoing the process of change from crawling to cocoons to flight. In the course of our lives, we grow as well. We mature physically from children into adults. Even after reaching our full height, some parts of our bodies (like hair, noses, and ears...) contine to grow our whole lives. Throughout our lives, we should all hope that we mature in other ways too. We can continue to grow intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.

Every living person undergoes the journey of growth from child to adult. That physical change is guaranteed by biology. The emotional growth needed to become independent is not always so easy. Beginning at that caterpillar stage, we need to be fed and taken care of. Sometime after that, we being to separate. We build a cocoon around ourselves sometime in the early teen years, when we lock ourselves in our rooms and talk to our friends on the phone for hours. SOmetimes the cocoon we need is to go to a college far away from home--in another town, state, or halfway across the country! Then finally, at some point, we break out of that cocoon and spread our wings as adults.

It's easy to fall into the trap of letting your parents help through that time of growth, especially since they are usually willing to give their lives for their children. They spend so many years caring for the every need of their child that it's hard to give that space to build their cocoons. There are the events like science fairs where it can be obvious if a parent helped their child out that make me a little sad. It's like they missed an opportunity to teach responsibility and independence--an amazing chance for growth!

Of course parents should love and care for their children. The swimming lessons of life need to be taught so they can stay afloat, but it's all about the journey and development through life. So often, people are so concerned with the process that they are blind to what the end result is turning out to be.

We are all the caterpillar and the butterfly at the same time. We are all growing. We are in a process of becoming. In some areas of our life, maybe we are the caterpillar, vulnerable and hungry. In some relationships, maybe we are in a cocoon, taking time and space, or doing our best to give it to others. And in some ways, we are fully grown, mature and free, like the butterfly. It is our task to grow and to become and to improve ourselves throughout our whole lives.