Not My Own

Chrysalis
Our world has been flooded with butterflies lately. My daughter is in love with red butterflies and wanted that to be the theme of her 4th birthday party (her twin sister wanted pink pigs! So we had a red butterfly pink pig birthday party.). At pre-school the girls each have their own caterpillar who are currently in their cocoons, getting ready to emerge as butterflies. Chrysalis: The stage in which a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. The dictionary defines chrysalis as "the protected stage of development." It’s amazing to me that one creature can curl up into a capsule, fall asleep, and wake up as a completely different creature! And why? Why doesn’t a caterpillar stay a caterpillar? Why aren’t butterflies just born butterflies? Whatever the answers may be, I’m grateful that God has given us this amazing process to witness through nature and glean hope from it for our own lives. To know that I am a work in progress, that I am no longer what I was and still becoming what I will be, is such a comfort to me. God is at work - creating, transforming, renewing. When I feel stuck in my caterpillarness, weak, longing for more, I am comforted by the promise of chrysalis – I am becoming something greater by the work of God in me.