Benefits of the Struggle...

I found this poem that I have had for awhile and found it very appropriate for the struggle that my family is going throuth right at this moment.

Benefits of the Struggle...
A man found a cacoon of a butterfly.
One day a small opening appeared.
He sat and watched t he butterfly for several hours
As it struggled to force its body through that little hole.
Then it seemed to stop making any progress.
It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it could and it cvould go no further.
Then the man decided to help the butterfly,
So he took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cacoon.
The butterfly then emerged easily.
But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings.
The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that,
at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand and be able to
support the body,w hich would contract in time.
Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of it's life
crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings.
It was never able to fly.
What the an in his kindness and haste did not understand was
that therestricting cacoon and the struggle required for the butterfly
to get through the tiny opening were God's way of forcing fluid
from the body of the butterfly into it's wings so that it would be ready for
flight once it achieved it's freedom from the cacoon.
Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life.
If God allowed us to go through life without any obstacles,
it would cripple us.
We would not be as strong as what we could have been.
And we could never fly.

I have found this exact theory to be so true about life.
When I was younger, we used to have to go take care of the baby turkeys after
they had hatched with shots and the like.
There were always a few slow pokes that took alot longer than the rest to get
out of their eggs but eventually caught up.
There were some on the other hand who would barely pick a hole in their eggs and you could see them inside the egg struggling and in my mind suffering.
I asked my dad if I could help the turkeys out of their eggs. My father in all of his wisdom and now I know trying to teach me a life lesson, which I didn't understand at the time but surely do now, said that I could help them out.
I would carefully break open the egg at the point of the cracks and help that little soggy wet bird out to it's impending freedom from what seemed like impending death. After awhile under the heat lamp to dry them and get them up and moving, I went back to check on these little babies that I so painstakingly took care of and ultimately, most of them were dead.
My father tried to explaint to my young mind that these birds needed to have the struggle, such the same as the poem, to break out of their shell themselves so that they would have enough of what it took to live. The wisdom of a father is always so necessary, even if it is not fully comprehended at the time.

My life in the next while is going to change greatly without Dexter there by my side to help me to make the choices that I ultimately need to make to get me through this life. I have to find the wisdom from all the people in my life that have helped me to understand these hard life lessons and muscle up the strength to move on without hesitation.
I now have to find the strenth to open my wings wide and fly, knowing all the while that my heavenly father will be there to put wind beneath them.