One of our four-year-old’s activities yesterday was to do a movement activity of the life cycle of a butterfly slow and then fast. He loved it. He especially loved demonstrating just how slowly he could move. I found myself wanting to speed him up. There were other activities to get to. He wouldn’t move until he had gone just as slowly as he could.
It made me think of all the mornings I would ask him to hurry up as we were trying to get on shoes, gather lunches and backpacks, and get out the door. Now, we don’t have to hurry. Now, we can slow down and yet I still find myself wanting to hurry the day along.
I’m not alone. I know there are so many people who want to hurry along this idea of staying at home. I know there are so many who want to “get back to normal”. Some days it even feels like we are stuck in a slow-motion version of a life we used to live.
But what if we are trying to hurry back to what was because there is a piece of us that knows that life we used to live isn’t going to be there anymore? The virus hasn’t disappeared nor the risk of becoming sick. What if in our hurry we are trying to convince ourselves that the massive amount of change and grief we have experienced isn’t there?
As I watched his four-year-old body moving from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly, I thought yeah I would like to fly and be free right now. But you can’t become a butterfly without the stillness and silence of the chrysalis. New life is coming, but metamorphosis takes time.
May Creator God grant your stillness and peace during this transformative Eastertide.