Butterflies

I have drawn a lot of butterflies in my time, mostly for other people who have asked.  But butterflies have come to mean so many things to me over the years.  When I was a youth my parents were forced to leave our home and seek work in another state…and so at a tender age I went through what could only be described as culture shock.  From rural North Idaho to suburbia Southern California…at the age of 12, and I think it slowed a natural development in me.  During the years where all the “beautiful girls” of Orange County were developing into how to be a woman, I was suffering from depression and shock. 

I had a Bishop who told me often that I should remember that not only was I a child of God, I was a beautiful butterfly…but I just hadn’t learned to spread my wings yet and show off my beauty.  From that point on I wore a butterfly earring…and for many years it reminded me what he said, and how he saw me.  Where so many others could only see the mask that I put on for self- preservation, he and one other saw what was underneath.  I just attended the Memorial and graveside service for her, and her parting has left a pain that there is no pill to cover.  She was one of my young women leaders, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that she loved me despite my complete inability to even hope to become a butterfly.  She would enfold me in her loving butterfly wings that had an unspeakable beauty.  She was safe, she didn’t judge me, she didn’t tell me to change…she just loved me knowing that someday down the line it would come.  As Hiemlich said “someday I will be a beautiful butterfly, and then everything will be better!”  Hiemlich was a little late in his changing, and he was gorgeous as a caterpillar, but he couldn’t change until all the circumstances had been met, then it was sudden and breath-taking.

That is how it worked for me, I couldn’t become a butterfly until the circumstances had been met…though I never forgot what my bishop told me, I learned to be patient and wait for God to finish His polishing of me first.  I wore that butterfly earring or one just like it until it my husband replaced it with a diamond.  It was him who showed me that not only could I fly already, but that it was what God intended me to do.  He took a still unsure butterfly, gave her sparkles, and held up the mirror to show her how truly gorgeous she was! 

A few years ago my husband bought me a butterfly pendant that I wear quite frequently; on the back is engraved “Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, She became a butterfly.”  It is a constant reminder for me of how and when my change came…when I thought my world was over. 

Butterflies are incredible insects, in chaos theory there is a belief that states that the creation of a hurricane is completely dependent on whether or not a butterfly had flapped its wings a great distance away.  In other words a small movement creates a massive change further away.  This theory was mentioned at the memorial service of my young women leader in conjunction with the way that she could change lives.  She just loved people into changing for the better…she had so much success with missionary work because she showed people how much she loved the gospel.  She showed me how to love the gospel while overlooking the people in it who only really love themselves and control.  She taught me that being LDS does not mean that you have to fit into anyone’s mold of what we should do, say, or look like.  She is one of the biggest reasons I continued to go to church, and one of the biggest reasons that I became converted to the gospel.  I pray that one day I will be able to say that I lived to be worthy of her, that she would be proud of me. 

May she be as persuasive in the spirit world as she was here, may she rest in peace, and may her family heal quickly.  Here’s to you Mickey, thank you for all you have given to the world, but more specifically to me!