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.