Fwd: fwd: butterfly

[Guest guest]

Several of us are " in process " of struggles with our insurance companies

(some would

call them battles!) A friend sent me this email today & I thought it

was a great one

to share to remind us that sometimes the struggles help us, too. I

wanted to share

this special story with you today as well. It is a butterfly story with

a great moral.

Beth S. in NC

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared,

and

he sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to

force

its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any

progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and it

could go

no further.

Then the man decided to help the butterfly, so he took a pair of

scissors and

snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged

easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. The man

continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any

moment, the

wings would enlarge and expend to be able to support the body, which

would

contract in time. Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the

rest

of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It

was

never able to fly.

What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand was that the

restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get

through

the tiny opening were God's way of forcing fluid from the body of the

butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it

achieved its freedom from the cocoon.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If God

allowed us

to go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We

would

not be as strong as what we could have been. . . .and we could never

fly!