Sacred Silence

It's been a good month. I've watched seven monarch catapillars transform into butterfies. Each one has been shared with other people. Each person has been simply surprised at their own reponse. Most people do not realize that they will be so moved by watching the transformation and releasing the butterfly. Here's a picture of the last one I released this past Saturday.I have seen transformation in three relationships in the past three months. Not any different than the stages of this insect's transformation. Each is in a different stage, but significant none the less. Most notably, a foster daughter has returned home to find me and brought a heart desire to reconnect. Ten years of waiting. She initiated the return. I had told God I would wait. It was very difficult. But the return was beautiful.

I thought it was all I could do to wait on that one relationship to find it's way through God's hands. Then I was asked to wait on another friend, a very dear friend, who was needing to sort pieces of life out for a time. She initiated a return to relationship this past week. One and a half years of waiting. Forgiveness and the beginnings of restoration. It was beyond hard. But the return was beautiful.

Waiting is not easy for a dreamer. A dreamer is someone who connects good eyes to see with a passionate heart to feel. When you have eyes to see, you want to see. When you have a heart to feel, you want to feel. Eyes are not meant to wait. Hearts were not meant to wait. The heart was made to beat with consistency---no hesitation.

I've thought several times about the story of the prodigal son. I wonder often about the father. Why do we get some verses on the prodigal son's day to day happenings, even some interactions he has with others. Perhaps we even see a bit into the older brother's life--what he is doing and thinking. But I have always felt like there is a gap--a glaring gap--in the story. My heart needs to know what the father did, who did he talk to, what did he say, how did he spend his days waiting, how was his heart...while he waited? I think because there is no insight into the days, weeks, months, years (?) the father waited---how he grieved and lived--I think we may tend to sugar coat his experience. Perhaps we make him out to be this resilient man who had no problems releasing his son, no problems waiting for the unknown, no problems handling his sorrow for a broken relationship.

Tonight, I'm thinking the scripture is silent on the father's days of grief because of how sacred his experience of waiting was . I'm thinking off the top of my mind and heart here, but really the only person I can think of that we get an up close look at the face of pain, loss, and grief in the New Testament scriptures is Jesus--seeing his blood drops, hearing his cries of mercy, watching him look around for others to join him for relief and support. The only other places I can think of (with the amazing exceptions of the Old Testament lives of Job and David) would be that we see people mourning at Lazarus' tomb, but what a brief glimpse! We can understand that the father of the prodigal son must have been deeply affected by the loss of a most precious relationship, but we do not see how he handles it. It is so personal. It is so sacred.

I want to see what happens in that chrysalis. It's the only part of the transformation I'm not privy to. I can watch the caterpillar chomp on milkweed. I can watch it shed it's outer layers of skin. I can watch it weave a connection to a flat surface and hang in a "J"--waiting to change. I can even watch the caterpillar begin to shed that last layer and become a chrysalis. But then...I can no longer see anything. I wait. The most amazing transformations are happening at that point in the process. What once was a caterpillar mouth with jaws and "teeth"--in the chrysalis becomes a butterfly's tongue--no chewing leaves, only an apparatus for sucking nectar from flowers. Legs turn to wings. Thick and pudgy turns into light and free. But in the meantime, all there is to see is an emerald green sack dotted with shimmering gold "buttons." No movement. No changes. I have no window to peek in. No matter how long I stare, or how many different angles I look from, or how many different people I get to check the chrysalis...I can see nothing happening. Even the 12 days of a caterpillar melting in a chrysalis crucible are too sacred for us to know.

I wait.