by Sherri Stevens

Are you in a dark and lonely place in your life?

Maybe the tomb you feel like you're living in is actually a womb. Think about what a caterpillar's mindset must be like during its metamorphosis. Just when it thinks it has melted into midnight, it unfurls its wet crumpled wings and flies away into a newfound freedom. What the caterpillar thought was its coffin turned out to be a cocoon.

When it comes to transformation, we tend to be long on butterflies and short on cocoons. In other words, transformation is a process, not an event. It consists mainly of decay that occurs in a dark and isolated space. No caterpillar ever circumvented its crucifixion before becoming a bold-wing butterfly, and neither will we in our spiritual transformation.

We all love the idea of a resurrection, and we would all love to circumvent the agony of a crucifixion, but there is no resurrection without a crucifixion. And remember that in between the crucifixion and the resurrection is tomb time. During tomb time, you will see no doorway with a dimly shining light at the end. Life can seem utterly hopeless because death to self has no doorway. Death to self has no daylight. But take heart! Your butterfly may be just about ready to bloom!

In my poetry book, Deep Calling Deep, I wrote a poem called Frozen Nightmare, expressing the pain and despair I was experiencing in my own life. And as you will read, my torment turned out to last longer than just a night:

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Without going into detail about the anguish and agony I have intimately come to know, I will give you the context of my suffering. In 1998, I was struck with a severe illness. It is now 2024. I was never healed of that illness. I still live with it today. Any person who has battled a chronic illness will tell you that their suffering has spread beyond just the physical. Suffering a chronic and painful illness also affects your mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.

That said, I know not all suffering is initiated by a physical illness. We can experience a myriad of miseries, each born of a different brand. But rather than focusing on the "thorn in the flesh," I want to focus on the rose that can bloom in the black of night we may find ourselves living in.

Isaiah 45:3 says, "I will give you treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places that you may know that I, the Lord, who call you by your name, am the God of Israel." We can discover treasures in our darkness and hidden riches in what may feel is a living hell. That may sound impossible or at least paradoxical. Still, I have learned that if we are willing to reframe our perspective, we can unbury rare blessings amid the blackness.

BLESSINGS IN YOUR BLACKNESS

I want to be very careful not to come off as if I am offering a trite "Top 10 Tips For Your Torment" list. Christians can often be guilty of "toxic positivity" and dismissiveness, and I do not want this list to be interpreted as if it should be classified in that category. The intent of my heart is to, first and foremost, validate every person's pain. I am deeply sorry for what you are experiencing (or have experienced), which is why I am inspired to share these perspectives that have helped me.

I hope that one or some of these perspectives might allow you to readjust your attitudinal aperture by enabling you to see your point of view from a different angle. May those who may be feeling hopeless, frustrated, or defeated by their broken bodies and unhealed hearts find some comfort, wisdom, or inspiration in one or some of these thoughts:

1. GREATER INTIMACY WITH GOD

Psalm 34:18 says, "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." When we feel brokenhearted, we are in the most optimal position to sense the closeness of God's proximity. When our spirit is crushed, we avail ourselves of seeing and experiencing His saving grace. Many Christians can say they believe this verse, but it is very different when you have actually experienced it for yourself.

2. ABILITY TO COMFORT OTHERS

Not everyone has earned the street cred you have earned through your suffering. The fact that you have suffered is what qualifies you to offer authentic empathy to another person. We may want to comfort another person, but offering sympathy to another person is different than being able to truly empathize with another person because you have experienced a similar tragedy or trauma. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 says, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God."

When we are in the middle of our misery, we don't see much upside to anything. But once we have the unique opportunity to comfort another person because we can relate to what they may be going through, we start to appreciate the value of the agony we endured.

3. BECOME MORE RESILIENT

I have never met a strong person with an easy past, and I bet you haven't either because it is in our struggles that we gain strength. Easy times create weak people, and hard times create strong people. If a person takes pity on a butterfly that is struggling to get out of its cocoon and attempts to "help" it by peeling away parts of the cocoon, the newborn butterfly may get free of the cocoon but will die soon after.

It is in a butterfly's struggle that its wings are strengthened, and circulation surges through the blood vessels of its wings so that it can emerge from its cocoon and be strong enough to fly away. When we steal the struggle from a person, we disempower them instead of allowing them to do the solo work they must do to become strong.

4. BREAK FREE FROM BONDAGE

In John chapter 11, the story is told about Jesus calling Lazurus to come forth out of the tomb. It says that when Lazarus came forth out of his tomb he was still wearing his grave clothes. This is the same condition we find ourselves in after we have emerged from our cocoon. We may have emerged from the cocoon but we still have to take off our grave clothes before we are actually free.

Grave clothes are constrictive. They are meant to be temporary, removed, and done away with if we plan to live in the freedom we were called to enjoy. But breaking out of bondage isn't easy! We all wear different kinds of grave clothes. The funny thing about grave clothes is that butterflies tend to be pretty judgemental about the type of grave clothes another butterfly has emerged wearing.

It is important for us to recognize that the cocoon is different from our grave clothes. The cocoon is something we need to get out of, and the grave clothes are things we need to take off. If we emerge from the cocoon and yet continue to live in our grave clothes, we will never experience the airy essence of our new nature.

5. GROW SPIRITUAL FRUIT

Fruit grows in valleys, not on mountaintops. We prefer to have more mountaintop experiences but it is in our valleys that we develop the character qualities that make us more Christlike. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control" - Gal. 5:22-23.

Our tomb time in the cocoon is similar to "walking through the valley of the shadow of death." We may long to be flying high in the sky, but it is during the time we are tucked away in the shadows that we gain the character qualities we will need to navigate our new life.

6. REALIGN YOUR PRIORITIES

It's amazing how once we emerge from our cocoon as a bold-winged butterfly, the things we once found interesting during our "caterpillar life" now seem rather unfulfilling and irrelevant. Colossians 1:12-14 says, "Giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of His beloved Son in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins."

As new creatures, it can take a bit of time for us to recognize and reorient ourselves to the new domain we have been delivered into. We will likely find that our new domain creates new desires within us which will eventually prompt us to realign our priorities to our new kingdom.

7. FIND NEW PASSION FROM YOUR PAIN

I once heard a heartfelt story that I think beautifully exemplifies how this principle of having our pain create a new passion can play out in real life.

A young woman severely injured her arm in a tragic accident. Her arm was mangled and burned to the point of being terribly disfigured and dysfunctional. After months and months of surgeries, with little to no progress, she asked one of her doctors what he thought was the best form of therapy to help her recover. Much to her surprise, her doctor answered, “Learn to play the violin.”

Apparently, the posture and movement required to play the violin were so physically challenging that this doctor believed the woman could be healed if she could master the motions through such muscular endurance. As the story goes, the woman exercised great fortitude and became a highly acclaimed concert violinist. During this woman's tomb time, she transformed her terribly mutilated arm into a well-trained and accomplished appendage to play music!

It’s your scars, not your stars, that can become your most profound passion and greatest ministry.

CATERPILLARS DON'T SPEAK BUTTERFLY

In closing, I would like to offer this word of warning: Caterpillars don't speak butterfly. If you are a new creation, don't expect to communicate well with a caterpillar. Caterpillars are committed to their ground game and are incapable of comprehending the freedom of your airy experience. Their life is limited to mossy materialism and comparing their caterpillar conquests.

The concept of floating in a warm summer breeze is totally foreign to them. If you try to describe such an experience to a caterpillar, they will likely dismiss your new ways of navigating the wind. You can try to communicate your reality to them so that they will understand it, but eventually, you will become utterly frustrated and exhausted before figuring out the futility of your objective.

Fortunately, you now have a new family of floating friends who will relate to your reality because it is their reality, too. That doesn't mean you can't hang out with caterpillars or do business with them, it just means that they will not be able to comprehend the paradigm of your new personhood. 

May your heart be filled with new hope, remembering that it's in the dark that God makes His art.

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