Butterflies
As she ran errands with her children one spring day,
Kaylyn Dunne was thinking about this. She had just returned
from a weekend retreat that used the butterfly as its theme.
The retreat had aroused her desire for a deeper spiritual
life, yet worried her too, because she had been asked to be
chairperson of the next retreat. Kaylyn had never been
chairperson of anything, and she felt quite inadequate. With
her already crowded schedule and a chronically ill son to
care for, was God really calling her to do this? She needed
a sign.
"Mom, look!" her son suddenly exclaimed from the back seat.
Kaylyn almost hit the brakes. Fluttering in front of her,
inside the car, was a huge monarch butterfly. It was a vivid
yellow, her favorite color. With the car moving at 45 miles
per hour and the windows open barely a crack, how had it
gotten in?
The winged visitor quivered around delicately, then landed
like a little puff on the dashboard. Awed, the children
stared at it. "It must be frightened," Kaylyn told them.
"Open the windows, and let it fly out." They did, but
despite the breeze, the butterfly stayed. Kaylyn pulled into
the library parking lot. "Let's leave the windows down while
we're gone," she suggested. But when they returned to the
car, the monarch was still sitting on the dashboard, as if
awaiting them.
Bemused, Kaylyn finished the errands, drove home, opened the
car doors, went into the house with her enthralled children,
and waited. Eventually the butterfly leisurely emerged,
circled the house in a kind of embrace, and flew off. "I got
to thinking of the timeliness of its arrival, right after I
had prayed," Kaylyn says. Did God intend it as a sign that
He was near? That He had plans for her to move more fully
into life, to shed her cocoon and spread her wings? Kaylyn
accepted the chairperson job, and it became her path to a
richer spiritual life. Since that day, butterflies seem to
visit Kaylyn often, especially when she needs encouragement.
One of the best encounters came when a friend held a prayer
service in her living room for Kaylyn's son. One of the
group pointed to the front window and exclaimed, "Look
outside!" Everyone did. Tapping gently against the glass was
a brown butterfly. Just a coincidence? Perhaps. But it came
in the middle of a snowstorm.
Flowers, rainbows, butterflies.nature's tender treasures.
Perhaps God uses them to bridge the barriers between heaven
and earth, to let us know that as He watches the sparrow He
surely watches us.
Copyrighted 1994 by Joan Wester Anderson. For more stories
of God's love check the website at
www.joanwanderson.com