Stitches and Butterflies

When I was a child, running in my garage (when my mother specifically told me not to) with my best friend I was a huge mess waiting to happen.

You know when grown ups always used the "you'll bust your head open" gig to get you to stop doing something really stupid?
This time, the gig was for real.
I ran full speed straight into my friends forehead.

I looked down at my hand after holding the wound and it was covered in blood.
Of course at the age of 5 I thought I was about to surely die.
My parents rushed me to the hospital with a wet rag holding my head together.
I remember hearing my mom and the nurse murmur back and forth about options, one of them being a "butterfly."
For those of you not educated in gaping wounds a butterfly is a quick fix for wounds not so serious.
I started crying, "not stitches! Butterfly! Butterfly! Please!"

Guess what I had to get?
Stitches.
A butterfly would be a quick fix but would never close this gaping wound.
My parents knew I would suffer through a period of pain, but that the wound would be shut correctly.
There were three options for their baby girl:
1. Let me bleed to death.
2. Give me a quick fix and let the wound break open again eventually and let me bleed to death.
3. Watch me suffer for a short time but eventually find true healing.

As a child I was angry with my parents for putting me through pain when there was this other option that would get me out of this mess just the same, but my parents knew such was not the case.

They knew the only way to see their sweet child be back to where she was meant to be, she had to suffer some.


Sometimes the only option to get you out of the muck is still painful.

Sometimes Jesus sees His kid's gaping wound and knows the only way to healing is a painful way.

You may have to suffer through thorns for some time to get out, but your suffering will lead you from your own destruction.

Sometimes suffering is really salvation in a cloak.

Sometimes we are thrown into a den of lions and sold as a slave to lead us to our destiny, one which we would have never went to without the catalyst of suffering to push us there.

Sometimes we are swallowed by a fish to puke us to the place God called us to but we ran from for so long.

Sometimes we must weather a storm on a battered ship so that God can get us alone enough to finally walk on the water with Him.

Sometimes plagues come before the parting of the seas.

Sometimes when we think we have been destroyed, it is really a detour to safety from devastation.

Sometimes God throws us into the waves because we have been clinging to everything but Him and it's time for that to change.

Sometimes suffering is a gift of Grace in disguise.

You will not come out shiny, polished and new.
You will come out with scars from fighting through bigger than life thorns.


I will always carry a scar above my eye from those stitches, but better a healed scar from suffering than on a death bed from a butterfly kiss.