Sometimes Life is a Metaphor

Every spring, Chris and I order butterfly caterpillars.  We have an inexpensive, one-gallon aquarium where we keep them safe and snug while they munch themselves to ten times their size, finally go into chrysalis and then - the butterfly.

Usually everything goes very well.  We watch them with awe...eagerly awaiting the beautiful Painted Lady butterfly we know will emerge. They hatch…they dry their wings ... then Chris, oh so carefully, places them on his finger and releases them outside.   He always says,  “Goodbye my baby.  Be happy!  Be safe!” 

This year things didn't turn out the way we'd hoped. We got our five caterpillars and gave them a snug, safe “womb” in which to develop. We watched them with delight as they grew and grew, finally made that long journey up the sides of their jars to the lid, and formed their “J” to go into the chrysalis stage.  With anticipation, we awaited the hatching, eager to see those beautiful orange and black wings spread out in flight. But something went wrong.

Two butterflies were born with mangled, twisted wings. They couldn't fly. I waited for a day, giving them sugar water, to see if the process was just taking longer than usual. Things didn't improve. Finally, I took them out into the bright sunlight thinking that God's healing sun would dry their little wings. That's when I noticed they didn't have all of their legs.  Sadly, I told Chris to put them in the rose garden and leave them, hoping he wouldn't be there to see the inevitable: a bird swooping down to capture them to feed her young.  Such is the way of nature I reasoned. It's the only way.

As Chris was dutifully taking them down to place them by the roses, completely innocent of what I was asking him to do to his beloved butterflies, it occurred to me: nature doesn't HAVE to be this way. They don't have to be “perfect” in the literal sense of the word. If they couldn't pollinate and procreate, their right to exist wasn't automatically negated.  They could be just themselves, giving pleasure to a 6-year-old little boy who loved them and was willing to turn them loose simply for their own good.

Yes, their wings are mangled, and they flop when they try to walk, but they have their own beauty, their own value, their own perfection.

We're keeping the butterflies until they die a natural death.  It will be hard for Chris when they die.  He can't look for them next spring, thinking that every Painted Lady he sees is his beloved Sam or Lou, but he will learn a very valuable lesson, and I'm pleased to learn it with him.

You see, Chris is adopted.  We were the seventh couple called.   He was headed for Children's Services because he wasn't “perfect.”  Chris was born with a moderately severe unilateral cleft of the lip, gum, and hard and soft palates. When he was carrying his butterflies down to the rose garden, I suddenly thought -- What if Chris had been abandoned because he wasn't 'perfect'?   My beautiful son, thank God, was not.

Debra Shiveley Welch ©2006

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