I'm a Butterfly

I need conviction.  I have conviction.  I hear more words from my own head than I do from outsiders.  I live on an island though I'm surrounding by Living Water.  That's right.  I'm surrounded by Living Water on all sides and instead of soaking it in I tend to feel more like I'm drowning.  I look around at my life and think, "It could be better."  I look around at the archipelago of isles around me and think, "Why not me?"

I sometimes wonder what I'm here for.  Is it to paint poetry like Paul Simon?  Is it to love the "unlovable"?  Is it for just one small act that I've already screwed up?  Or perhaps it's a small step that I've yet to make.  I look outside of me for hope beyond hope.  Somewhere buried deep I have hope eternal, as I said, I'm living among the the Living Water.  Somewhere below my surface is an eternal flame.  It's a magma building inside me and making room for new life.  The igneous is bubbling inside me though the sedimentary is not ready to depart.

Metamorphosis.  Do butterflies remember what it was like to be a caterpillar?  Do they think, "Wow!  What joy it is to finally have my wings!"?  I can remember being a caterpillar.  Sometimes I feel like I still am one.  Some nights I stay up late and whilst my wings are fast asleep I wonder, "Why have I been placed here?  My wings might as well be clipped for I do not use them as they were designed."

But I'm a butterfly.  It is for freedom that I have been set free.  I have not been given wings for others to admire, though their colors shine majestically in the Spring sun.  I have not been given wings of fragile silk so that I can covetously look upon the feathers of an eagle, longing for something greater or stronger.

I'm a butterfly.  I am made to fly.  I am made to shine brightly.  I have been changed, metamorphosed as it were.  I am new every day.  I am gentle when it is necessary, though I have been freely given the power and strength to lift what is necessary.  My gifts and my strengths are not for me to hold onto tightly.  I cannot hoard my free gifts: my mercy, my grace, my fantasy.  It is for freedom, not for me and my kingdom!  I can leave my chrysalis behind and begin to feel the air between my wings.

I'm a butterfly.  I must give from what I've been given or I'll lose the very wings that let me fly.

Wandering in the Wilderness

When one lives in the wilderness, it's hard to just get lost.  One does not intentionally lose himself.  He cannot make a plan and set a road map for the trail, for if he does he will already know to where he has set out before his journey has begun.  That's like hoping, planning, and wishing to be spontaneous.  It cannot be so.  One only gets lost so easy in the wilderness because he was lost there to start with.

Show me a trail and I'll analyze it until my days are shortened.  Teach me a chosen path and I'll worry, though subconsciously so as to hide the sin from my soul.  Then, when I realize that I've worried needlessly I become anxious regarding my anxiety.  How did it get here?  Who let it enter?  I'll put labels on my skin, like tattoos that penetrate deep into my tissues.

I'll seek an answer, all the while distracting myself from the truth, or sometimes the Truth.  I fall victim to the carnal, the secular, the pretty distracting roses.  I disregard the sneezing, saying, "It must be something else."  I worry I'm becoming less of myself and by that time I can't find who I used to be.  I look down at my feet and notice my shoes are missing.  "Perhaps they've fallen off," I tell myself, knowing full well it was I who gave them up.  I donated my opinions, my perspectives, and my glasses to get to know another.  I desired so deeply to fall in love, to be in relationship, to show them that I care that I was content to strip to nothing of my own.

"I am you," I tried to tell them.  "I can be you," I would say, but that wasn't the same.  Our experiences are different even if the emotions held hands.  I'll share my broken heart with your sadness but only until you're whole again.  When you can fend for yourself I'll need you more than you may have needed me.  Who can teach me to be whole again?  Who thought they could teach me to be whole to start with?  Why is it simpler to point to my cracks and shift the pieces, however slightly?  Why can I not be content with my being?  Why don't I like me when I am myself?  Who has taught me to despise my desires, to resent my rejoicing?

Yes, perhaps I'm not myself today, but if that's true then who am I?  I can be no one but who I am.  I AM says (S)He made me to be just what I am and more.  How can I be ever be content if comfort is the enemy?  How can I be me?