I wrote part one this morning, fully intending to get back and do part 2 way before now. But then I took a hike, got into a long conversation with mom as soon as I got home, and then later went to pick up my son from work. He honestly thought he would be ready when I arrived but…nope. I told him to go ahead and finish what he needed to I could wait. I then passed the time by watching people passing in the dark and scrolling through social media.
When he finally motioned for me I pulled into the garage area thinking he simply wanted to close the doors and not need to walk around the building to get to me. Instead he wanted to check the battery in my Jeep. Before he could do that, a car suddenly appeared at the far end of the building. My son walked up to see what they needed. I’m sitting there with the hood of my Jeep up and listening to what sounded like a car load of dogs barking and then the car and my son disappeared. Trust me, its very eerie sitting in a garage alone not knowing what was going on. He finally returned, said it was someone needing to drop off a car and not sure how to go about doing that. Once he was in the car, all the doors to the building checked, we were finally on our way home. He had just completed an eleven and a half hour day. I don’t miss that one bit.
I’m sitting here now, and have been for a while, trying to figure out how I wanted to go about continuing the discussion on the comparison of the metamorphosis of the butterfly and of becoming a Christian. So I paid a visit to the rabbit hole.
https://christiantoday.com.au/news/butterfly-life-cycle-compared-to-a-christians.html
http://www.castingmynet.com/spiritual-metamorphosis-transformed-and-made-new/
http://loyal2him.com/foundations/butterfly.htm
Just three of the many options I found to help in explaining and confirming that the comparison is applicable. And that explain the concept better than I.
For me, personally, there have been many changes, but I’ll stick with one.
One of the things that I have battled the most over the past four years has been the loneliness. There have been times when the pain felt nearly unbearable. I would see couples out and about, I would see things shared online and I would feel every negative emotion that one could think. I felt abandoned, I felt angry, I felt fear.
I could find moments of peace while hiking, but it wouldn’t last. At night I would pull a cold, unused pillow close and wait for sleep to claim me. Knowing I would wake often during the night. I dealt with this right up until this past year.
Right up until I built that miniature walking track that my son dubbed my thinking circle. I could go out there and walk in those small circles and talk with the Lord. Out loud even. I did a lot of that, nearly every day at some point I was out there.
Over the course of several months, I talked, and I received answers. With every answer, I understood a little better. Finally I came to a time where I felt not the empty loneliness, but peace. Peace that has lasted. All the memories are there, but the painful ache is gone.
Change doesn’t necessarily happen instantaneously or even overnight. Some times it takes a while, sometimes, we may fight the change, comfortable in the pain we know and fearful of the changes we don’t. But once we accept, and move toward the change, like the butterfly, it can be beautiful.
