Tuesday, April 16, 2013

{Metamorphosis | Jessica Drossin April Contest Entry} Personal


Metamorphosis



A change of the form or nature of a thing or person into a completely different one, by natural or supernatural means.

A life cycle. Season.

Butterflies… experience Metamorphosis.

Butterflies go through four stages in life that are considered to be great mysteries. They are real survivors even with life’s many twists and turns. Butterflies have been able to adapt and make it through unimaginable obstacles. Butterflies are holometabolous, experiencing a complete metamorphosis, or in other words, a complete change in body form. They begin life as a larva and pupate into an immobile state and emerge as a butterfly, looking nothing like their pre-pupated state. – from gardenswithwings.com

For us, this change or transformation could be a life change. A defined moment in time where we are no longer what was.

This change is not without a complete breakdown.
A complete reassembly.
A complete transformation.

Self enlightenment is the destruction of everything that you have known to be real.

When I created this image for the April Jessica Drossin contest I knew I wanted to of course include the butterfly imagery into the month’s photo theme as it was metamorphosis.

A caterpillar goes into its chrysalis – it’s protective covering in order to basically become liquefied and restructured. That’s a pretty big breakdown if you ask me. What happens during this time is really nothing short of amazing.

A breakdown and reassembly is painful. It’s a time of retreating into a protective, immovable place – until the change is complete.  If we saw this by sight, we could not trust what was happening by faith, by the course of nature, the  hand of God.

I have felt like the hands of God were my chrysalis. This past year. He held me .. all the while inside, I was changing.. am still changing. Who I was before – my identity. .. looked so different to me. That identity – was what I knew. It was also what I was comfortable with. I was at a place, a stage where I had to change? And go through a transforming hell to do it?

Yes.

In the beginning, this would have never been the road I would have imagined. Variety of factors … they come into play. Some in our control, many not. This could lead very easily into another entire blog post about just what causes us to transform into a new creature.. not today.

Change is tedious, difficult, necessary.

When I look at this photo.. I see a girl who is in a grieving position… and also a womb like position. Greiving and rebirth. Breaking down and reassembling. She is resting on a chrysalis with a butterfly lain across her back. Showing where she came from and what is to come. The inbetween of stages, of growth, transition. A caterpillar under her foot to remind her of what is past. Who she was but is no longer. A pin not through the chrysalis attachment but instead her heart.

Pain and eventual change.

Pain and eventual beauty.  Leftover remnants of an old life remembered, but a new identity, a new life. An empty chrysalis – soon to be fragments of dust and ash scattered on ground…


"Is it sin, which makes the worm a chrysalis, and the chrysalis a butterfly, and the butterfly dust?" Max Muller

Beauty for ashes.
Lord knows every step of this transformation has been hard. And painful. And tedious.
But within the chrysalis of His hands He is reshaping me. Remaking me. Removing the old me. During this immobile state I realize that His plans for me are far greater and far more lovely than I could ever scheme alone.

He makes beautiful things.