Untangled

On the morning of a strong nor’easterly breeze, I spied a fluttering struggling flash of orange in the brush. The top tip of her butterfly wing was entangled in a splintered slender stalk of dry grass. I don’t know how long she’d been there, or how she got caught. Fight as she might, she was stuck. Maybe she was trying to tear herself free. I untangled her – mangling her wing-tip in the process. She rested, then lifted up higher than the tree tops, catching that easterly and flying faster and straighter than I believed butterflies could.

We get entangled – entangled in what we own, by our responsibilities, by choices we made, by choices we didn’t make. Some entanglement is pleasurable, some feels safe, some is stressful, and some feels like a trap. Maybe we might want to soar free on the winds of life, unencumbered, but getting untangled might mean mangling a part of our lives that leaves us or others wounded.

My grandmother used to say, “Better the devil you know, than the devil you don’t know.” She meant it’s better to stay put with your problems than to fly off into problems you can’t predict. I don’t know if she was right about that, but that butterfly was tearing her own wing to get free.

Let’s Pray: Dear God, what do we do? Do we stay with the pain we know, or risk the pain we don’t know? Whatever it is that makes us feel like we are caught, we ask that either You set us free, or help us be where we are. Amen.

Today’s Thought Is: Better not to know any devils.