This morning at church, I was so excited to see a few of our life group students who came in from college for the holiday weekend. After spending the last four years connecting with them on a weekly basis, I’m really missing our time together. I’m certainly no mind-reader or psychoanalyst, but I got the distinct feeling that the transition from the security of home to the chaos that is college life has caught a few of them by surprise.
Change can be really hard, even when the change is good. I can’t even count the times I’ve missed the blessing of a new season because fear of the unknown overwhelmed me. It seems we’re not that much different from the Israelites, after all. Through an incredible display of His power, God gave them a free ticket out of bondage, but they weren’t convinced they wanted to make the journey. As crazy as that sounds, we fall into the very same trap with a sobering sense of predictability.
Perhaps it’s a part of our defective DNA that compels us to remain in the familiarity of our bondage. We embrace the pain we know over the prospect of freedom–simply because it’s uncertain. We’d rather stay in our very own “Egypt”where we know we’ll have food to eat, even though it comes at the expense of our dignity. But we can escape the “comfort zone”–this prison of our own making–when we realize that reward is not without risk. We will never experience what “might be” as long as we are afraid to leave “what is.”
Now, back to those college students I saw this morning. My heart hurt for them as I remembered my own experience of leaving the nest for the first time to go to grad school. I wanted to quit and come home so badly, but my dad wouldn’t hear of it. From his vantage point, I could somehow learn character and perseverance by completing the semester. I couldn’t see it, but since he was still paying all my bills, I chose to stay.
Now that I’m a parent, I know how hard it must’ve been for both my mom and dad to hear me crying on the phone and resist the urge to hop in the car and come rescue me. They must’ve known that in order to become the person God created me to be, I needed to experience hardship without running home for refuge. Apparently, they were a lot smarter than I gave them credit for at the time.
Reflecting on my own journey and thinking about these college students reminded me of the young boy who tried to liberate the butterfly. He saw that the tiny butterfly was struggling to escape from a small hole in the cocoon, so he snipped a piece that seemed to be keeping the creature from his freedom. However, the butterfly was unable to leave the cocoon and fly away because his body was too large and his wings were too small. The boy didn’t realize that God created the cocoon so that the butterfly had to work to enlarge the opening, pushing and pulling, expending great energy. Through this divine design, the fluid in the body made its way to the wings, giving the butterfly enough strength to fly away.
Oh, how we parents want to snip those pieces of the cocoon that seem to be holding our kids back. We want to make the opening just a little bit bigger so they can emerge without such difficulty . But if we pull out the scissors, we will rob our children of the strength and skill that only comes from the struggle. I pray that when it’s time for my kids to leave the cocoon, I will resist the temptation to make their exodus easier. Quicker, maybe…but not easier.