“God will not permit troubles to come upon us, unless He has a specific plan by which great blessing can come out of the difficulty.” Peter Marshall

There is this story about a man who found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared in the cocoon, and so he watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through the little hole. At one point, it seemed as though the butterfly had stopped making progress. In fact, it appeared as though it could go no further, so the man decided to help the butterfly. He snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. However, it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. The man expected that the wings would enlarge and expand to support the body, which would contract in time, but neither happened. Instead, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never flew. What the man, in his kindness and haste, did not understand was that the restricting cocoon was God’s way of forcing fluid from the butterfly’s body into its wings, so that it could fly once free form the cocoon.

Each child in our country has about eighteen years to prepare for living in the real world outside of the home and school. During these years, the child is allocated a certain number of experiences, which serve as teachers. These experiences include consequences, which can at times be somewhat painful. The pain attached to these natural consequences causes the child to remember and reconsider the decision made at the time. As these memories pile one on top of the other, they form a memory bank, which guides cause-and-effect thinking. Often the struggle we face as parents is the temptation to step in and rescue the child, robbing him or her of the chance to learn from an experience when the price tag is small. For example, young children, who make poor decisions, usually pay the price of being cold for a short period, being hungry for a little while, getting a reduced grade on a homework assignment, or have difficulty with their peer relationships. I would like all the kids who have any association with me to have as much practice, and the benefit of as many “real life learning experiences,” as possible while the price tags are still affordable. Here at school, we build these experiences into the daily program, by establishing a number of rules, which force the children to think and make decisions in advance. Allowing children the opportunity to solve their own problems, guiding them through these experiences with empathy and natural consequence, helps them develop habits regarding problem-solving and decision-making that sets them up to become butterfly’s in the future.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need. If God allowed us to go through our lives without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong and we could never fly!

I hope you find this helpful. May you find encouragement this week from the Lord. Thanks for reading!