Struggles and Butterflies...

One day a little girl found the cocoon of a butterfly with a small slit at the end. She sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to squeeze its body though that little hole. Then it stopped, as if it could go no further.
So the girl decided to help the butterfly. She took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings.
She continued to watch the butterfly because she expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body. Neither happened. In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its shortened life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It was never able to fly.
What the little girl, in her kindness and haste, did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required to get through the tiny opening were God's way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings. And once the butterfly achieved its freedom from the cocoon it would then be ready to fly.
Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our lives. If God allowed us to go through our lives without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been. We could never fly!