Yellow Butterflies

Mooresville, NC

I sat down on this padded porch chair, putting my coffee down and breathing a deep sigh of relief. It’s been forever since I have written, and the past however many weeks hit me like a wave knocking me off my feet. For a person that finds peace and inspiration in being still and reminding myself why I am alive, I have taken almost no opportunity to do so. I love my life being go-go-go, but only because I am able to stop and acknowledge the pace and reflect to find closure and peace through writing. My life has to be made of of conversations, faces, places, tiny moments, steps taken somewhere new. But if I am not documenting these, if they don’t cement into my heart through the written word, they blow away like dead weeds in the wind, I feel empty.

In six weeks, I have had people in my life that could be complicated protagonists in a novel, epic characters on the big screen. People who live in a dark world, who see through their hands touching someone’s skin. People who’s eyes show a world of confusion and unrest. Others, who’s sparkle with joy, who see the world they same way they did on their third birthday. I have held hands with eternal children, locked in an aging bodie they hardly know what to do with. People who love without any reason, who hug like they would cease to exist if they let go, who laugh without any occasion. They wrapped their way around my heart, chocking out questions of growing up, finances, balance, practicalities.

They’ve left me with the transcending idea that anything not done to bring brightness, love or hope in another human beings life is utterly ridiculous and pointless.

And so I continue to live my life. When selfishness entraps me, I know I must bust out by centering myself through writing, then action. I cannot have one without the other. It is call and response, faith and works, prayer and mission.

I have a hard time explaining my life. I can’t explain how I am so blessed, how I am dirt poor and yet the whole world is open to me. I can’t explain how I know people worth their weight in gold, how the riches of my conversations and experiences overwhelm me to tears at times. If I told you I worked my hands to the bone to make my own dreams come true, that would be a complete lie. It is only Grace. It seems almost effortless, all things becoming new and falling into place, God’s plan for my life, all doors opening up. It is a gift, no strings attached. I have thrown out my old sense of obligation to try to pay back such a gift or even try to understand why I am the recipient of it. Just receive.

The night before I left Texas, I had a vivid dream. I dreamt I was in China, in an old temple, intricately and beautifully designed. I had my camera and was capturing what I could with it, through the window, people outside in the market. I turned around and saw a small yellow butterfly landed on the floor of the temple. I snapped a close up of it to my satisfaction, and turned once again to photograph a small boy with a shaved head standing in the doorway. When I turned back around, I was shocked to see not one, but hundreds of yellow butterflies on the floor next to the one.

I know my life is about capturing the beauty thats around me through my pen and camera. Ultimately, that beauty is human beings. Many of us our caterpillars, we start off crawling in the dirt, hardly believing it is possible to ever fly. The metamorphosis that takes place, makes the wings in the end that much more a miracle. I want to capture those redemption stories, and it may just start with one, but who knows what it will become.

Since I’ve left for this month long road trip, I can’t help but see yellow butterflies wherever I go.