Father's Day, 2009

My oldest daughter was born on Saturday, June 20. As it is in 2009, the 21st was Father’s Day. Becky was the first of three children who blessed Patty and me.

You don’t get an owner’s manual with the birth of a child. It’s on the job learning. We strive to make our children’s lives as good as it can be, but, we also need to let them learn on their own – even if they make painful mistakes.

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared, he sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and it could go no farther. Then the man decided to help the butterfly, so he took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings.

The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time. Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It was never able to fly. What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were God’s way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon. (author unknown)

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If God allowed us to go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. If we allowed our children to go through life without any obstacles, it would cripple them. They would not be as strong as what they could have been. And they could never fly.

(From Pray Notre Dame.)