Butterflies and poop

I’ve felt myself out of sorts lately and my mind spinning round and round over the past few days. I am feeling very unsure of where I am headed or what the next season will look like for me. After 3 ½ years of grad school and finally walking across that stage I think I expected this time to feel different – thought I would have more direction and confidence. Honestly it has been kind of anti-climactic. Maybe I thought at this point I would have “arrived” – which I know in my head is a ridiculous notion because that will never happen in this place. So many things are changing and stirring in me and it's hard – not sure I like it so much. It doesn’t feel like the beautiful picture of metamorphosis that I often think of when I consider change and how so many liken it to a caterpillar turning into a butterfly.

I got to see a new perspective of that process this weekend. My 8 yr old daughter brought home “Luigi” about 2 weeks ago – her caterpillar that had entered into his chrysalis. The wait was much longer than we thought and at several points along the way she had kind of given up and thought for sure he was dead. I kept encouraging her to wait and be patient knowing that deep change takes time. One night she came downstairs after going to bed worried that if Luigi became a butterfly that he would get “red runny poop” all over the house because she had seen that happen in her classroom. Now this is part of the change process I knew nothing about – my vision of the change was just a glorious breaking through of the chrysalis and poof there is a beautiful butterfly ready to soar. There wasn’t supposed to be struggle and icky stuff to deal with, right? The struggle to change form and break free from the cocoon was enough! In case she was right I happily moved Luigi into our downstairs bathroom and noticed he wiggled a little when we touched him – so we were hopeful he was still with us. The next morning he was still in his chrysalis but when we got home from church there was a beautiful little butterfly in my sink. But I quickly noticed the red “poop” all around the sink and the butterfly looked quite fragile – barely moving at all. His wings were still folded up a little and needed to dry so we left him for a while with some sugar water to drink. Slowly but surely his wings opened up more and more throughout the day and he began to walk around. We eventually took him outside where he could get sunshine and freedom. We left him to settle down in some grass until he was ready to fly. I guess I am writing all of this to say that I feel like that little butterfly – after all the struggle of school I thought I would be ready to fly right away but instead I feel much like the little weak winged butterfly sitting in a gloppy mess. So now I am looking for the sun – leaning into God by listening and seeking – surrounding myself with friends that speak life and encouragement to me – and just enjoying some down time being a wife, mom, and me.