Monarchs and Mud

 

image courtesy of thegraciouswife.com

He's 4 years old.

He loves to move and dig and push cars and sign "butterfly" and he's full of life and energy.........

.............He loves digging in the sandbox....and what a treasure it was this week with the rain the night before and the sand all muddy......

he began to dig with his hands, with the toy truck, the shovel.......playing with nature and making my heart happy........

so focused on the mud that he missed his favorite thing:  a butterfly flitting over the sandbox, up towards the wall of the school and up, up, up into the bright blue sky........

image courtesy of wallpaperaccess.com

I called his name.  He barely looked up. He was so focused on making "mud" combining the water in the bucket with the sand.......

I got closer to him.....I said his name again and he looked up long enough for me to sign and say "Butterfly" and pointed up.........

he wasn't impressed.  He kept digging.

What in the world?  this kid LOVES butterflies but he was so focused on digging in that mud that he had no time or interest to look up at one of his favorite things.

and that's when I saw a spiritual/emotional lesson for us grown-ups.

Don't we sometimes linger in the "mud" of our lives....the trials or problems or dark times.........when all we need to do is change our focus and look up??

The butterfly, to me, has always represented freedom...with a fragile beauty.

To some in the Christian religion, butterflies represent the resurrection. (particularly monarch butterflies).

Symbolically speaking, the monarch butterfly is viewed as having the ability to transcend the ordinary and go up into the heavens.

Some religions believe the butterfly represents the spirit or soul.

For me...it has always represented freedom.

The monarchs are all over the mountains where I hike in August and September.

They then, upon the arrival of autumn or late summer, begin to migrate down to the warmer climate of Mexico.

They are free to leave the dark, cold days of the north.

We can be free, too! 

 We can look up from "digging in the dark" and look up to the bright Light that God shows us when we seek it.

If we are going through a dark time, God's Light can warm our soul, our emotions, our mind..........

All we need to do is look up!