I've been drawn to butterflies ever since I can remember. My mum telling me that one landed on my nose when I was a little girl is one of my fondest memories. The transformation they go through in their lifecycle is mindboggling and awesome. Somehow deep down inside it always gave me hope that if a caterpillar could possibly turn into something with such beauty and be given wings to fly, then who knows what potential there is in me, sharing the same Creator.
Most of my life I felt like a caterpillar, small and insignificant seemingly taking forever to get anywhere, stuck to the ground that was built with all the events of the past. I so wished to be light and graceful and soar like the Butterfly and leave behind all the painful, heavy parts of me that no longer served me.
It was 2009 when I decided to leave my office job at Bournemouth University to embark on the adventure of becoming a Montessori teacher. A beautiful, kind and gentle soul I was working with at the time popped into my office on my very last day, sat down and started telling me a story about a butterfly...It would be very difficult to render the story in such a special way as she had but will tell it as I have carried it in my heart.
There was a wise old man who was known to have a special gift of being able to answer any question he was asked without fail. One day two little girls tried to test his knowledge and prove that nobody could possibly know everything. They decided to take a butterfly in their hand and ask the wise old man if it was alive or dead. If he said it was alive, they would let it live and if he said it was dead, then they would crush it. What they didn't expect was the following. When they got to the old man and he asked them what they wanted to know, they told him they had a butterfly and wanted to know if he could guess whether it was still alive or dead.
Much to their surprise the wise old man paused for a moment then went on to say "the fate of the butterfly is in your hands..."
I am forever grateful for this story and message it carries.
Quite a few years pass, many beautiful memories created on the tapestry of my life as well as knots and events not so beautiful. It is March of 2015 and I've just come back from a magical long weekend in Rome with a very special friend. One of the souvenirs I brought back from this mini holiday was a tiny cross made of thread that fell in front of my feet as I sat on the ground of Ciampino airport waiting for our flights. When I asked my friend if she had anything to do with it she looked as clueless as I did.
The day after our return I was back on the road visiting lovely ladies and gentlemen, helping them with their daily activities. The job involved a great deal of driving. As I was making my way to someone near New Road at the roundabout just before it a shiny white Mercedes overtook me and as I caught a glimpse of the number plate I had to look again because I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
The number plate read loud and clear: J E Z U S. Hungarian for Jesus. A big clue in regards to what was going to evolve in my life from hereafter...
Another two years and four months pass, it feels like I show no resemblance to the girl from 2015, let alone anyone earlier than that. I have met someone kind and loving and funny and if that wasn't already incredible enough he's gorgeous too AND wants to marry me, ME of all people. We're living in the most beautiful home I've ever lived in on the doorstep of the New Forest, planning our beautiful wedding and surrounded by more blessings than I can possibly count. We've got the most loving, supportive families anyone could hope for, our two adorable furry friends who take us on amazing adventures in the forest day after day, and our lounge opens onto a forest where we can watch squirrels chasing each other, birds of a variety I've never known to exist having baths and collecting worms for their little ones and water and tend to our begonias and daisies and roses that we have been fortunate enough to nurture in our back garden.
That sounds pretty perfect right? I mean who could find ANY fault in a life like that?
My caterpillar.
Close to three months before the wedding, it hit me like a steam engine, a fear like I've never experienced before. An ocean of paralyzing emotions made worse by the fact that everyone around me, including myself, expected me to feel nothing but pure joy and excitement. I so desperately wished with every cell in my body that I could. But when alone with myself all I could think of was that someone with so much emotional luggage as what I've been lugging around all these years could NEVER be the wife Daniel deserves and a mother to precious children who deserve the best of everything life has to offer. All I wanted to do was hide somewhere in a corner of the world where nobody could find me. But the only thing scarier than me taking on the commitment of being a wife and mother even if it was with a Man as wonderful as Daniel, was the thought of a life without him...
Where do you go with a nuclear bomb of this magnitude?
The only place where the impossible and unimaginable is made possible. You go to God.
Last night my beautiful friend from Rome invited me to a worship in her church called "Seek First the Kingdom", it felt like my last hope to make any sense of the chaos whirling around inside of me.
You might be thinking how on earth did we get from the butterfly to here? Keep reading.
I'm driving to my friend's when a car pulls out in front of me with the following on its number plate:
L 3 3 3 P K E. For those of you not fluent in Hungarian, I'm guessing there will be quite a few out there, lepke in Hungarian means butterfly. Plain and simple. And 33 or any multiples of three in my heart has always symbolised Jesus.
So I carry on driving with a curious excitement growing inside me that reminds of a beautiful saying I brought from the sweet Bay Tree nursery that was my second home for a good two years. Always believe that something wonderful is about to happen.
I did.
The worship was light filled, my friend's presence safe and healing, the music soothing, the flowers reassuring and radiating joy and simplicity. The evening could not have been more nurturing and invigorating. Like the softest, fluffiest, loveliest wooly blanket wrapped around you by humming angels when you're cold. It was like a little glimpse of heaven for a weary soul...
When the singing started, so did my tears... There was more singing and readings and more singing and the whole worship just felt like I was riding a rainbow. At the foot of that rainbow were two ladies with gentle smiles and soft hands who sat on each side of me and prayed for me to be able to believe that I am good enough to enter something as sacred as Marriage and to be able to accept Daniel's precious love. They prayed for the healing of my past and for the Holy Spirit to fill me up and as I just paused to write that, I felt a warm tingly feeling rushing up and down my arms.
When the praying quietened down and the gentle hands left my shoulders, the first beautiful lady to speak on my right said the word
"butterfly"
She said she was shown a butterfly and said I would be like one...
Then I turned to the lady on the left and she said what came to her was Mother Theresa and the words
"life is a song, sing it, life is a gift, unwrap it" a poem I had on my wall for years and which still resides in my little chest of treasures, given to me by the family of the same little girl who drew the winged picture of me above...
Amen.
