Frail

When I think of this word different images come to mind. I think of the wings of a butterfly, how delicate they are, and how you could easily hurt the wings if you held the butterfly the wrong way. BUT the butterfly isn’t delicate inside, this butterfly  found its way out of its cocoon! It struggled and struggled til it broke free, bursting forth in colorful array!

I think of the dear elderly woman, whose hands are worn and she walks bent over. Appearing frail on the outside, but this is a woman who raised 9 children through the Depression, working hard on a farm. Her inner strength was strong back then and still is!

Sometimes we look at physical features and think ,”Oh that person is frail and weak!”, but we can be very wrong. When I was a teen, my short stature gave the impression to my mischievous guy friends that I was weak and a easy target.That I could be thrown into  the pool, pond, ocean,etc. Basically any body of water attracted my body like a magnet. What they didn’t account for is my fighting spirit! The majority of the time they did accomplish the task, BUT…not every time. Wasn’t quite as simple as they had thought.

A few years back it was reported in Indiana about a elderly woman who had a robber break into her home. He wasn’t armed, he figured she was elderly;  weak and frail and that  it would be a easy task. I am sure he was red faced, when the cops came to pick him up as he was being beaten by this “frail” woman’s back scratcher!

We can’t look at the physical features of someone and determine the power of their spirit. And as strong as we want our hearts to be, we need to have a degree of fraility with them as well. Frailness isn’t always a bad thing.

As I shared in some past posts, this past year has been a hard one on our family. Our hearts have been broken, but it doesn’t mean that they are no longer strong. That fighting spirit is there and in ways my heart is stronger than ever before! But, there is still a frailty there as well.

When you face hard times and severe blows, there is a temptation to close up your heart with bars of steel. To lock it like Fort Knox so no one can get in and break it again! But my friends, this is the time when you need to let your heart still have some frailty  to it.Maybe tenderness is a better word. Keeping your heart tender and knowing that by allowing yourself to love and trust again, you are risking the chance of  being hurt again;  but that it is worth the risk. For closing the door and throwing away the key, saying,”I’ll never be hurt again”, is only hurting yourself in the long run. Keeping yourself from blessings that are waiting out there for you to discover!

The human spirit is a powerful thing! It can be strong amidst the hardest of times,  while still being  tender and fragile like a butterfly’s wings. Breaking out of a cocoon ready to soar to new heights and to where ever life takes them! Knowing that yes, there would most likely still be those times in life where they fall, and heart ache comes BUT as one of my favorite quotes say…Don’t miss that chance!