Butterflies

You know that saying, "butterflies in your stomach?" I'm sure we've all used the expression at least once in our lifetime to describe a feeling of anxiousness, nervousness, stress or love. I know I have. My latest use of the phrase came when I was around 18 weeks pregnant. Marshall upon seeing our little boy on the ultrasound moving all around looked at me and asked, "can you feel him doing that?" To which I replied yes and when asked to describe the feeling I told him that while at first it kind of felt like gas now it felt like butterflies. Nolan was flittering around inside me just like a butterfly flies from flower to flower. He was my beautiful butterfly.

I thought of this saying again today as I watched a butterfly fly around inside our gazebo, trapped in by the mosquito netting. I'm not sure exactly how the butterfly got in there to start with, but he floated around in there with no apparent way out. I took the opportunity to snap some pictures of the rare occurrence and to admire the exquisite beauty of such a magnificent creature. Eventually, I opened up the mosquito netting and shoed the butterfly out and on his way and watched as he soared up towards the treetops and out of sight.

In Mexico butterflies are associated with the Day of the Dead as it is during this time that the monarch butterfly migrates back to Mexico from Canada. According to tradition, the butterflies are the souls of ancestors returning to Earth for their annual visit. Mexican tradition is not the only one to associate butterflies with souls. In Greek myth, Psyche (which literally translates to mean "soul") is represented in the form of a butterfly. Even Christianity often depicts the butterfly on ancient tombs and in some paintings Christ is seen holding a butterfly.

It is fitting, when you think of the journey of our souls. All the transformations, growth, and situations that eventually morph us into ever finer beings. At the end of our soul's journey, we are forever changed. We are no longer anything like what we started out on the journey as. Just as the butterfly develops out of an egg to a caterpillar to a cocoon and emerges a beautiful butterfly, we too undergo transformations with the hope that we will emerge a beautiful butterfly in the end. The only guarantee in life is that we will have a journey. We will have strife, pain, loss, happiness and sadness. We will meet many obstacles in life. Our only goal in life is to meet all this head on with the hopes of emerging on the other side with the grace and eloquence of a butterfly. Just as the butterfly does, we too must accept the changes that come and emerge from our transitions as beautifully as the butterfly. So, as I watched the butterfly fly away I thought two things. One was that if that butterfly was the soul of one of my family members returning for a visit, maybe it was Nolan. The other was that the beautiful dark butterfly certainly carried with it some darkness in its life and yet came out of it eloquently. That beautiful dark butterfly is exactly what I want to be. I can't hide the darkness inside of me from the situation I have been given, but I can accept the change in my life and allow myself to come out gracefully on the other side as if a butterfly breaking out of its cocoon.

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