There are moments you can picture before they ever happen.
Someone places a butterfly gently into your hands.
For just a little while, it is there.
Alive.
Delicate.
Still.
You might whisper the name of someone you miss.
You might pray.
Or maybe you’d simply look at those folded wings and wonder how something so fragile can carry enough strength to lift itself into the sky.
Perhaps that is why butterfly releases mean so much to people.
Not because the butterfly is someone we have lost.
Not because releasing it erases grief.
But because for one brief moment, our hands have something living to hold while our heart is holding someone ~ or something ~ it loves.
Then comes the difficult part.
You open your hands.
Maybe the butterfly pauses.
Maybe it crawls across your finger before opening its wings.
I think I’d talk to it.
“Okay, little one. Whenever you’re ready.”
And somewhere in that moment, I’d probably be talking to God too.
“Thank You for what ~ and who ~ I have been given to love. Please take care of the part of my heart that still has trouble letting go.”
Then the wings move.
The butterfly rises.
Your hands are empty.
But perhaps your heart is a little lighter.
Because not everything we grieve has died.
Sometimes people are still beneath the very same sky, but life has carried us in different directions.
Children grow up.
Friendships change.
Relationships end.
Dreams change.
Seasons of our lives close before we are ready.
There is grief in those goodbyes, too.
Loving something does not always mean we get to keep holding it.
Letting go does not mean saying, “You didn’t matter.”
Sometimes it means:
“You mattered so much that part of you will always travel with me. But I cannot keep holding yesterday with both hands and still reach for tomorrow.”
Maybe that butterfly can carry something else away with it, too.
A hurt.
A regret.
A little anger we’ve held too tightly for too long.
Not because those things never mattered.
Not because they didn’t hurt.
Simply because we don’t have to clutch them forever.
So we open our hands.
And perhaps that is the quiet lesson hidden inside those little wings:
Some things are meant to be treasured without being possessed.
Some people can still be loved even when they can no longer walk beside us.
And some things we release never really leave us.
They remain in a memory, a lesson, a prayer ~ or in who we became because they were once part of our lives.
So maybe the prayer is simply this:
Lord, help me treasure what I was given. And when it is time to open my hands, give me the courage to let go with gratitude instead of bitterness.
Because sometimes the smallest wings can stir something very large inside the human heart.
A Word ’Round Town Reflection
The 7th Annual Whispering Butterfly Release was scheduled for August 20 at Riverwalk Park in Independence, Iowa. This reflection was inspired by the idea behind remembrance butterfly releases; Word ’Round Town did not attend or report firsthand from the event.
Word ’Round Town
Northeast Iowa Community Living
Come on… let’s go ’round town. 🦋
Keep Goin’ ‘Round Town
There’s always another story waiting just around the corner.