September 2019, I was walking to the bus stop to go to work at the church as the administrative assistant. The day was rough. My body was hurting and I didn’t understand or know why, yet refusing to take the opiates the doctors offered me to mask the pain. Walking with my heavy backpack, my spirit was low and my head was down as I braved the even heavier traffic of Lafayette Road. Walking with my head down, something that growing up in my family and in my neighborhood, was taught not to ever do.
“You don’t ever walk with your head down. It’s a sign of weakness, insecurity or pain. Always walk with your head held high, no matter what or who, you don’t look down unless you are picking up something.” I heard my grandmother’s words with every step I took, chuckling a bit to myself about how crazy I often drove her.
I’d joke and say “But Gaga, I’ve found some good stuff with my head down. Remember that $100 bill I found on our way from the ticket house? I found my favorite stone, a lottery ticket and that sack of weed…”
“Hush!” she’d scream and I’d giggled but straighten my face sure enough out of respect and the fact that I knew that my grandmother was, as always, “speaking the truth.”
Yet that day in September 2019 with Chronic pain, depression, grief and mourning so much loss – my head was down. I was in the midst of several storms and my backpack probably weighed a ton. Midway in the middle of the street, as the cars raced by on every side, on the ground lay a butterfly on its side. Its wings flapped weakly, barely moving and as the cars passed by us both on every side, I walked past it and thought, “how sad, it’s going to die.”
I had got to the bus stop but couldn’t take my mind off that butterfly, so I walked back to the middle of the street, noticed it had stopped moving and picked up the butterfly by its wings. Here I was hurting, going through, in the middle of heavy traffic and afraid of bugs – picking up this butterfly by its wings to take it back to the bus stop, for what, I didn’t know. I placed it among some flowers and weeds, and as I waited on my bus to arrive, the butterfly’s wings began to flap as it moved up higher on the flowers and finally the light pole. As my bus came, I took a picture of the butterfly without understanding how significant that moment truly was or what the purpose of this simple encounter with another of Yah’s wounded creatures, on this particular day, was for. I can tell you that when I got on the bus that day, my spirit was much lighter and my head was held high.
I will never know what happened to the butterfly. It could have dropped dead the minute I was gone, fallen victim to a bird, went back into the streets to be run over or it could have flown to lands unknown. I can’t tell you what happened to that butterfly because that part of its journey was not my assignment. My assignment was a mere simple thing and gesture, to pick up that butterfly and put it in a better position.
In ancient culture the butterfly is a symbol or personification of the soul and rebirth. In fact the Greek word for “butterfly” means “soul” or “mind”
“The butterfly at the bus stop” became my testimony on how we should never be content on walking past something or someone who is afflicted, who needs help, and not do anything. This encounter reminds me that we are all Yah’s butterflies and at some point, we have all been that butterfly in the middle of some road or storm in our lives, where we were or felt weak and The Most High sent someone to pick us up by our wings and put us in a better position in life. Be it physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, financially or professionally.
So when we talk about mental health and spiritual health, we have to talk about how 50% of mental health illness is hereditary and 50% environmental. We can not control what we are as far as our heredity but we can control how we help ourselves or others who are afflicted. For those who are commissioned to serve by ministering to others also note that you can’t pick a butterfly up safely by the wings if you are too busy stepping on the body by being judgmental, self absorbed and/or holier than thou attitude. How can you both judge and labor with someone at the same time? Sometimes we call ourselves picking somebody up but because we are either too broken ourselves, ill equipped or too distracted that we end up causing further damage by pulling their wings off.
And if you are the butterfly at any point in your life, it’s ok to have faith and get help too. It’s ok to have therapy and theology, to allow yourself to be picked up and placed in a better position. Don’t let anyone tell you that therapy is a waste of time, especially when they don’t have the time, because it’s not. When we have been all traumatized by a violent American history, an impatient, unemphatic, unjust and harsh world that results in the lives of our children being taken, them taking each other lives and taking their own lives – it’s’ evident that it feels as if there are more butterflies in the middle of the road than they are up flying. Do we truly see each other? Do we not recognize that how we treat or don’t treat our fellow brothers and sisters has such a ‘butterfly effect’ in the world?
We need to seek to always be obedient, use our discernment and be bold in our assignments. That each of us are butterflies, a soul, that as long as we are living may be seen at any given time, in the middle of the road or in mid-flight on this journey called life. The next time you see someone in need of being picked up by their wings, may you not walk by content on that it’s not your assignment or so caught up in your own world that you fail to see the beauty and purpose in another. So as we continue to pick each other up, may we pick up our own wings by doing so and fly to destinations unknown but always felt.

~ copyright © 2019 TaMara E’Lan G.