Why Butterflies, Hannah?

Butterflies have become a constant theme in my life for quite some time now.  For a few reasons, actually.  

Their ability to fly.  Oh, to be able to fly.  To be able to fly is to be able to do things freely.  Love, laugh, be happy...to be able to be weightless, burdenless, and in a way careless, and fearless.  To be able to fly would be to be able to look at the world in less of a human way, and in more of a divine way.  I often think that if the world was looked at differently, it would probably be much better than it sometimes seems.  Butterflies are beautiful.  They come and go in an instant, but you feel grateful to have seen them for even a moment - to witness their sacredness.  Sometimes they fly right by, or you’re lucky enough to watch them for a while.  Beautiful is beautiful.  I think it's something more felt than seen.  Have you ever asked God who you're supposed to be?  I have.  Every day.  I pray to be the person He needs me to be.  I want to be the kind of person that makes people feel wonderful whether they just meet me at the cash register, or if they meet me and know me for a lifetime.  I want people to be grateful to have seen me, and experienced my sacredness that can only be accredited to being a daughter of God. 

Sometimes I believe that I am one of the reasons the Lord put butterflies on earth.  A gift for me.  A reminder.  

I am made up of many colors, and they may not always be displayed in the most elaborate ways, but they are still gorgeous.  I wasn’t born that way.  I had to learn and grow and change. Just like a butterfly.  I've had to go through a refiners fire.  A metamorphosis.  I still am.   Being brave enough to show those colors is often the hardest part, but once that is achieved, much can be done for the world.  

“A butterfly lights besides us like a sunbeam and for a brief moment, its glory and beauty belong to the world but then it flies on again, and though we wish it could have stayed, we feel so lucky to have seen it.”

“Happiness/love is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you sit down quietly, may alight upon you.”- Nathaniel Hawthorn

Grandma’s Butterfly quote:

“If you love something

Give it away. 

If it returns, 

then it’s yours.

If it doesn’t, 

it never was.”

Untattered Wings

It’s times like these that you heart and mind is full for an unexplainable reason, that you see the world in a different way.  That colors are perceived with an open soul.  It’s times like these where on must realize what they have and what this life is about.  This life is so much more than what we think. We have so much to worry about yet our greatest joys come from the simplest innocence.  Each and every one of us need to take a breath and have the courage to repair our tattered wings and fly away, showing no only the world but our very selves the beauty and color that only the most gifted eyes can see.  Share with the world your fixed wings.  Embrace the life that is in front of you.  Embrace the moments that take your breath away.  Look at the stars and realized that you don't have to know it all.  Have a calm heart and decide to float rather than fall.  Each of us must decide how to be.  So be who you want to, got to, and are going to need to be.  Share with the world your untattered fixed wings.  

  

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.  ~Rabindranath Tagore

May the wings of the butterfly kiss the sun

And find your shoulder to light on,

To bring you luck, happiness and riches

Today, tomorrow and beyond.

~Irish Blessing

Butterflies are self propelled flowers.  ~R.H. Heinlein

If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies.  ~Author Unknown

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.  ~Richard Bach
But these are flowers that fly and all but sing:

And now from having ridden out desire

They lie closed over in the wind and cling

Where wheels have freshly sliced the April mire.

~Robert Frost, "Blue-Butterfly Day"

Beautiful and graceful, varied and enchanting, small but approachable, butterflies lead you to the sunny side of life.  And everyone deserves a little sunshine.  ~Jeffrey Glassberg

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.  ~Richard Buckminster Fuller

With the rose the butterfly's deep in love,

A thousand times hovering round;

But round himself, all tender like gold,

The sun's sweet ray is hovering found.

~Heinrich Heine, "New Spring"

"Just living is not enough," said the butterfly, "one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower."  ~Hans Christian Anderson

Love is like a butterfly:  It goes where it pleases and it pleases wherever it goes.  ~Author Unknown

I've watched you now a full half-hour;

Self-poised upon that yellow flower

And, little Butterfly!  Indeed

I know not if you sleep or feed.

How motionless! - not frozen seas

More motionless! and then

What joy awaits you, when the breeze

Hath found you out among the trees,

And calls you forth again!

~William Wordsworth, "To a Butterfly"

I only ask to be free.  The butterflies are free.  ~Charles Dickens

The butterfly's attractiveness derives not only from colors and symmetry:  deeper motives contribute to it.  We would not think them so beautiful if they did not fly, or if they flew straight and briskly like bees, or if they stung, or above all if they did not enact the perturbing mystery of metamorphosis: the latter assumes in our eyes the value of a badly decoded message, a symbol, a sign.  ~Primo Levi

Flowers and butterflies drift in color, illuminating spring.  ~Author Unknown

We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.  ~Carl Sagan

The green grass and the happy skies

court the fluttering butterflies.  ~Astrid Alauda

Bees sip honey from flowers and hum their thanks when they leave.

The gaudy butterfly is sure that the flowers owe thanks to him.

~Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.  ~Author Unknown

Go on, hitch a ride on the back of a butterfly.  There's no better way to fly.  ~Pat Monahan, Scott Michael Underwood, and James W. Stafford

Gray sail against the sky,

Gray butterfly!

Have you a dream for going.

Or are you the blind wind's blowing?

~Dana Burnet, "A Sail at Twilight"

This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man will never on his heap of mud keep still.  ~Joseph Conrad
Where have those flowers and butterflies all gone

That science may have staked the future on?

He seems to say the reason why so much

Should come to nothing must be fairly faced.

~Robert Frost, "Pod of the Milkweed"

As for butterflies, I can hardly conceive of one's attending upon you; but to question the congruence of the complement is vain, if it exists.  ~Marianne Moore, "To a Steam Roller"

We must remain as close to the flowers, the grass, and the butterflies as the child is who is not yet so much taller than they are.  We adults, on the other hand, have outgrown them and have to lower ourselves to stoop down to them...Whoever would partake of all good things must understand how to be small at times.  ~Friedrich Nietzsche

Nerves and butterflies are fine - they're a physical sign that you're mentally ready and eager.  You have to get the butterflies to fly in formation, that's the trick.  ~Steve Bull
Find your butterfly; find you!!

That's why.