Chrysalis

Spiritually speaking, for the past two years I feel I've been shut up inside a chrysalis.  Having the potential to fly, but not flying.  Being protected, but feeling bound. Taking nourishment, but remaining unsatisfied.

A chrysalis is the cocoon-like wrap that envelops a butterfly caterpillar. It's a strange mix of ugly and beautiful, strong and delicate.  From a distance, nearly invisible. Up close, laced with detail and purpose. 

I now feel that I am about to emerge from this cocoon.  I have been through the larva and pupa stages of young marriage and hands-on, hard-work motherhood. Nights when sleep fled at the sound of a baby's cry, and days when I sat in a puddle of tears wondering if my sanity and polysyllabic vocabulary would ever return to me. Mornings around the breakfast table reminding the boys that napkins aren't just for girls, followed by afternoon car rides from piano lessons to soccer practice, from birthday parties to youth group, from basketball games to driver's ed.   Nights when kids piled onto our bed or sprawled across the floor just as our heads hit the pillow and asked if we could pray for them because temptations were overwhelming, and they were tired of fighting the devil and their own wrong desires. Nights when they had the car keys but the car wasn't in the driveway by curfew.   Special occasions punctuated by bouquets and perfume, Windsor knots and shiny shoes.

I have seen one of my offspring take a wife,  two earn college diplomas, and three find full-time meaningful work.  Just typing that sentence causes me to catch my breath. My work should be nearly finished, and yet I have a good eight or ten years left to launch the last child into  "the real world" where his siblings dwell.  Not that I'm rushing it. I'm not. But I do feel as if the once-thick boundaries of my life are now thinning, nearly  threadbare from stretching and straining to find identity in this awkward stage between caterpillar and butterfly.

God is stirring something in my heart, something new, something that will transcend circumstances.
I sense this fluttering, a rapid beating in my chest, the kind that mixed equal parts excited and nervous. What is my purpose and what are the details that will give wings to it? When will I see this metamorphosis ? When will I emerge from my chrysalis? When will I fly ?