Taking Care of God's Little Spaceship

Have you ever decided to adopt a new daily practice of self-care, whether physical, mental, or emotional/spiritual? From the goal to meditate or pray every day; to the intention to brush your hair 100 strokes, floss after every meal, or walk 10,000 steps every day; to signing-up for online brain training, have you ever decided to adopt a new routine or ritual? How did that go for you? 

Did you achieve your goal from day one, never missing a day of your new daily practice? That experience has never been mine. If it’s ever been yours, I hope you will tell me about it in a comment and I hope I get to meet you one day, for you are a hero to me! You’re definitely a person with all your 7 Childhood Treasures gleaming abundantly in your treasure chest!

The title for this blog post came into my mind this morning, as I did yoga and meditated. This longtime practice is one I’ve always hoped and intended would be daily. Honestly, though, I’ve been doing it for decades as an episodic practice—a spate of days here, a flurry there. Only very recently has it become, truly, nearly daily. It hasn’t been long—just a little over a week—but 8 out of 10 consecutive days is a new record for me.

Before we fly....

Scrolling my newsfeed on Facebook the other day, I saw this quote, as part of an inspirational meme: "When a butterfly is mature, it slides from its chrysalis, dries its wings and flies away." My immediate thought was, "It's not that simple!"

I know the reality of the butterfly's post-chrysalis phase, and I also know that it's a great metaphor for your growth and transformation--and mine. For us, emergence from our transformations is also not so simple.

Years ago, I was a butterfly farmer (yep, raised Monarchs) and I can tell you that there is a significant span of time and some crucial activity between a butterfly's emergence from the chrysalis and that first flight. This window of getting ready to fly is greatly over-simplified by the phrase "dries its wings."  In fact, three simultaneous and inter-related activities take almost a half-hour to complete. In a six-week lifespan, that 30 minutes is like 4-1/2 years for one of us humans.

First, the butterfly begins to "zip" its proboscis, creating a long cylindrical tube out of what starts out as two half-cylinders. She unrolls and re-rolls the two sides of the divided proboscis, over and over, to seal them into a continuous long tube that will enable her to feed for the six weeks or so of her lifespan.