Patience

             But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23)

 

            Before I left for Florida last fall, an Eastern Black Swallowtail Butterfly formed its chrysalis – and did not emerge. I left the enclosure in the garage over the winter. I was not surprised when it was still there at the end of March, and spring has been more cold than warm. I knew it wasn’t likely to emerge, but  recently I’ve been fretting a little about it. Why couldn’t it hurry up? Had it died? This morning when I opened the garage door to throw away some garbage, I looked at the chrysalis, and then I noticed something dark at the top of the enclosure.  At long last, there she was in all her chilly glory.

            I don’t know how long she’d been waiting, but I got her out and released her on salvia, then later moved her to some thyme (farther from the bird feeder.)  She’s in the sunlight and free at last. I decided to name her Patience because she and I waited all winter and most of the spring for her to emerge, then she had to wait until I noticed she was there before she could be free.

It's an old and often rehearsed picture of patience, I know, but I’ve lived it, so maybe the lesson will settle more deeply into my soul. The life of a butterfly is birth, frantic chewing, waiting (internal work), flight and reproduction, and death. We get to cycle among the middle parts of the process, and “frantic” doesn’t apply only to the time spent chewing. The problem is that – probably quite like the butterfly, we don’t see what we’re going through as temporary or part of a process. It's when we realize this that we can be patient.