The Butterfly Effect

Have you heard that each flutter of a butterfly’s wings can alter the course of a world? I know a secret. The secret of how we find our beloved. I will share with you this secret, and you’ll never look at a butterfly the same way again.

Every caterpillar is a human love that lays dormant, until one day, one of the tiniest of angels that stay within the fields and folds of foliage, whispers to the caterpillar that the time is ripe for the great transformation. The angel performs a sacred ceremony with the caterpillar, wrapping themselves into a sacred space where the angel sings to the caterpillar the love story of two individuals destined for divine union.

The story colors the changing caterpillar with hues and a design as unique as the design of the destined couple’s love. When the caterpillar emerges as a butterfly from the sacred space and spreads its wings for the first time, the dormant love within each individual awakens, and the search for each other begins.

Each of the butterfly’s wings are as if they are the hands of the individuals destined to touch, and each flutter of the wings brings their hands closer together. These individuals could be thousands of miles from each other, but each flutter of the wings pushes them closer together. When the butterfly flies, it sees their hands, and it pushes, condensing time and space. The serendipitous takes form, that somehow within all the chaos that is life, these two individuals will find themselves doing something out of the ordinary so that they can meet within the extraordinary; such is the power of the butterfly’s flutter.

Along the way the butterfly visits fields of beautiful flowers, to the purple fur of the blazing stars, to the cone shape of the echinacea, the blanket of blooms of the phlox, and to the marigolds that look like sunshine on the ground. To the uninitiated, one may think a butterfly is simply savoring their nectar, but I know another secret; flowers are as holy as monks praying in a sanctuary from sunrise to sunset, and every sway of a westward wind is a hum of a prayer, and the butterfly visits these flowers and takes in their nectar to receive blessings of sweetness upon the destined couple’s love.

The butterfly’s vision is all of the destined couple’s hands. The left wing is of the right hand, and the right wing of the left hand, and the flutters bring them ever closer. The butterfly can almost see them meet. The serendipitous miracles have taken place. Their hands are stretched toward each other and with one more flutter of the wings, their hands connect. Union! The individuals who have never met somehow recognize each other. A meeting of eyes. A meeting of touch. A meeting of breath and soul. It had been there all along, quiet within them, waiting for an angel to whisper to a caterpillar that two individuals were ready to transform into a couple.

That is why granddaughter, I’ve waited to your wedding day to gift you this photo and to share this secret story with you. It was the day you introduced your beloved to me, and when you two had a picnic in the field of gold outside my front porch, I snapped this photo. When I looked back, there, between you two perched on a marigold, I saw your butterfly, who must have thought your love so special it wanted to see your union for itself. That is when I knew you found your person. May you two celebrate your love well into years as golden as the marigolds in this photo, and always remember the magic of the butterfly’s flutter who brought you together.

So much love,

Grandma