“Tell me, sir, what is a butterfly?”

“It’s what you are meant to become. It flies with beautiful wings and joins the earth to heaven.  It drinks only nectar from the flowers and carries the seeds of love from one flower to another.”

“Without butterflies, the world would soon have few flowers.”

“It can’t be true!” gasped Yellow.

“How can I believe there’s a butterfly inside you or me when all I see is a fuzzy worm?”

“How does one become a butterfly?” she asked pensively.

“You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.”

“You mean to die?” asked Yellow, remembering the three who fell out of the sky.

“Yes and No,” he answered.

“What looks like you will die but what’s really you will still live.  Life is changed, not taken away.  Isn’t that different from those who die without ever becoming butterflies?”

- excerpt from Hope for the Flowers (trina paulus)

"just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.