...so, I wanna tell you about three individuals.

First is a young boy who lived in the 1970s. He grew up with a shift working Father and a Mother who worked full-time, which meant afternoons with potential for mischief.

He went to a public school in a bit of a low socio-economic area in West London and was short for his age, so he was bullied and got into fights because they said he was small and weak. He often got the cane (that's school corporal punishment for those born after the 80s) for being naughty, and the teachers called him stupid.

Deep inside, he was sensitive and kind, but often found himself being cruel along with the rest of the crowd and hated himself afterwards.

The Second is a teenager in 1980s Australia. He convinced himself he hated school and that he must be dumb, but he had just slipped through the proverbial gaps. As soon as he could, he was outta there, dropped out at year 10, got himself a job pushing trolleys at the local Woolworths, bought himself a guitar, taught himself to play it and left home at 16.

But he loved music and writing songs, although soon became insular and socially isolated. He found community in an 80s cover band, working in local pubs and playing Duran Duran and Tears for Fears and Kids in the Kitchen. He also got connected into a church youth group.

Third is a man who lived in the 1990s. He got married in his 20s and had 3 kids before he turned 30. He had a business and a house with a pool, but it all seemed to vaporise before he was 40. He felt like a failure and blamed himself for letting his children down, and threw himself into work and church life.

Eventually, with the help of a beautiful soul, he learned how to love himself again, and that helped him forgive and love others better.

Now I said they were three individuals, and I knew them all.  

They are all related, and they are all related to me. Because, as you no doubt guessed...they are me. They are not me now, but they were me then. I became someone else whilst still remaining myself. 

The ever-changing me. 

This happens to everyone; we all become the next us. We change; we evolved, from a caterpillar to a cocoon to a butterfly.

I love the way well-known British author and motivational speaker, Paul Scanlon puts this.

Paul says butterflies are not ex-caterpillars, they are an entirely different creature, a new and beautiful masterpiece. 

"Their metamorphosis into a butterfly is so drastic, so final, that they have no caterpillar DNA left" (Scanlon, 2019).

He goes on to say that if we were to cut open a cocoon, so scientists say, and have a look inside, what we find is best described as caterpillar soup.

They were one creature, they disappear, and dissolved, and then reappear as a completely different creature. They eat a different diet, they have a different mode of transport and they have a different way of thinking about the world. 

From crawling slowly through leaves and branches in shade, to flying free from flower to flower in the sun. It's a massive transformation and a lot of it is spent in darkness and solitude.

This can be very much like how we change and transform, like in my illustration of the three people. The middle bit can be scary, the cocoon is like the place of transition from one version to the next. What happens in the dark and lonely cocoon is the meltdown of the former you and the formation of the next you.

Scanlon's analogy continues with the acknowledging that now you have to learn to speak butterfly, you have no caterpillar language left. Speaking caterpillar will keep you earthbound, but you were born to fly. You can't go back to being a caterpillar, like the old you, you gotta take to the sky

We all have many cocoon moments in our lives.

There was another guy named Paul who lived between 4 BCE and 64 CE. He was born in Tarsus, in modern-day Türkiye, and he wrote letters to the early Christians, which make up a fair bit of the second half of the bible.

He once wrote to the churches in Rome and said;

"let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think" 

Paul spoke Greek, and in Greek, the word transform is metamorphoō, (meta-MORR-phow)

Sound familiar? There's that caterpillar again. 

For me, looking back, I became a new person, transformed into who I was meant to be. I am still becoming who I was made to be. I found that sense of self through faith.

You might feel like a failure, or be sad or confused, or feel like you're in a dark and lonely place, and...

maybe you're, ending one form and emerging into the next, ever-changing you.

Paul Scanlon—Butterflies are not X caterpillars they’re a whole new creature #soulprosperity #butterflies #caterpillars #findyourtibe | Facebook. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/PaulScanlonUK/photos/a.639134616160384/2747198538687304/