Tag Archive | benefits

The Benefits of Struggling…

This is a short story I read a while ago and I saved it. I never learned who the author of this was, but it has always reminded me that struggle is part of life and a very necessary thing and without it we could not accomplish what we were meant to do in this world or reap what is rewarding.

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared,
he sat and watched the 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 could go no farther. Then the man decided
to help the butterfly, so he took a pair of scissors and snipped off the
remaining bit of the cocoon. 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 to be able to support the body, which
would contract in time.

Neither happened!

In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a
swollen body and shriveled wings.

It never was able to fly.

What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand was that the
restricting cocoon 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 its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved
its freedom from the cocoon.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If God allowed us
to go through our 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.

Author Unknown