Wednesday, August 12, 2015

{A Broken Wing}

I honestly don't understand why these strange things happen to me.

Well, maybe I do.  I believe deep down that it is because I am loved by a very, very personal God who knows ME.  I also believe that if you ask Him to start showing His love to you in ways that are meaningful to you (and probably only you), He will absolutely do that for you.

So while sometimes it feels like my stories seem weird and childish and insignificant to others, I think that a lot of people can relate to the feeling and experience of God making Himself real to them in a way that meant a lot to them.  And maybe they felt weird and childish about their story too.

That is the purpose of sharing this...to connect a part of my story with yours and to show you how much God loves and cares for You!  (Maybe one day I will write a post about who God is to me now versus the God I grew up believing Him to be and how I almost cringe to use the word "God" to define all that is love and light and goodness and peace in this world, because of my - and potentially others - religious aversions to and definitions of God that are not true to who He really is.)  But for today...this is the story I want to share.


I would say it was about a month ago that I started noticing a lot of Monarch butterflies.  They seemed to be everywhere.  Beautifully stunning in their colors, its not surprising that they would catch someone's eye.  But it was more than that for me.

I felt this quiet yet insistent voice tell me to pay attention to those butterflies.  I noticed that voice and I heard it but I didn't really know why it spoke to me or what I was supposed to do with this little piece of information.  I didn't mention this impression to anyone else. I just kept watching for and seeing lots of Monarch butterflies and every time I noticed one I just felt this little burst of happiness and this feeling of a special little hug from God.  And then my day would go on.



Last Thursday I was just around the house here by myself.  Doing chores like laundry and bookwork and then I went outside to mow lawn and take care of the pool, etc.   I was walking in our driveway and I looked down and saw a Monarch butterfly sitting there.  Of course, it drew my attention, so I went over and looked at it more closely.  It didn't take long for me to notice that it had part of it's wing missing and it couldn't fly.  And then I glanced over and saw the rest of it's wing...lying there in the driveway.



I carefully picked up the butterfly and held it in my palm.  And then I picked up its wing part that was lying there on the ground.

It wouldn't rest in my hand or perch on my finger.  As soon as I would take my other hand off of it, it would just try to fly away.  Except that it couldn't.  When it tried, it would just fall down to the ground.

I felt something well up inside of me.  Emotion that I couldn't quite explain.  But it had to do with the connection I felt to this butterfly and it's struggle to fly with a broken wing.  The way it wasn't giving up and how beautiful it still was...even with it's obvious flaw.

I gently carried it into the house and got my phone, and then went out to the back yard with my new little friend.


Depending on how I snapped the pictures, you could barely tell that it was missing a wing.  But for anyone who cared to look close enough, it was very apparent.

I looked to see if I might be able to re-attach the wing, but that didn't seem probable.

So I just watched it struggle to fly, I watched it...so full of life and determination and fearlessness, and yet so broken.


And then after a little while I picked it up and carried it to the edge of the yard and put it in the tall grass amongst the trees and just hoped for the best.

I felt a kind of sadness as I walked away.  Can butterflies live if they can't fly?  What really is a butterfly without it's ability to fly?  Does it still have significance?  Does it matter?  Does anyone still appreciate it's beauty?


Then, honestly,  I forgot about the butterfly.  I had the pictures on my phone but I hadn't looked at them again.

Last night Jeremy and I were both at home, working on projects around here.  I decided to mow the grass.  I was coming up alongside our back deck on the riding lawn mower when I glanced ahead of me, and guess what I saw?

I may have gasped internally if not audibly, because there in front of me in the grass, was my broken-winged friend.  It was a good 50 feet from the edge of the woods where I had placed it to the back deck where it was now.  I got down off of the lawn mower and I picked it up.  Yes, definitely the same butterfly.  With the same distinctive injury.

I gently put it aside and continued with my mowing.  But that's when I knew I had to share this story! Because it is about so much more than a Monarch butterfly with a broken wing.

It is about love.  It is about redemption. It is about struggle and courage and pain.  It is about God speaking and it is about us paying attention.

Later, I Googled "Can a monarch butterfly grow a new wing?"

I found out that they can't.  Once a wing is gone, it's gone.  I also learned that Monarch's only live about 1 week so the odds of me seeing that same butterfly twice are even more amazing.

But I learned one other thing.  A broken wing can be fixed.  If I had looked it up last Thursday when I had that wing piece with me, I could have gotten a tweezers and some special glue and I could have given back to that butterfly the gift of flight.

I wish I would have taken the time to do that.  I think it would have been good for my soul.  Had I known it was possible, I probably would have.


There is a lesson in this for me.  We can't fix ourselves.  We all have "broken wings", unhealed places, things that keep us from reaching our full potential.  But there is someone who can help.  Who can heal.  Who can restore us to new.  We just need to be still and let Him do His gentle work.  Let Him touch us and put us back together.  And then we can fly!
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