Do you know you are going to be a butterfly?

A few weeks ago, I was reading a talk from a the compilation of Women's Conference 2007 addresses that I got at the library. I just opened it and started reading one. It is called "Faith to Believe When Dreams Have to Wait" by Ardeth Kapp. (Sorry. I couldn’t find the talk online.) It is about her dream of being a mother that she was not able to fulfill. It is a great talk, but I want to talk about one part of the talk that has stuck with me. I was reading this talk a few hours before going to a visiting teaching appointment and the message was "The gospel of Jesus Christ teaches the eternal potential of the children of God". Ardeth Kapp mentions a Family Circus comic where one of the children asks the mother, “Do caterpillars know they are going to become butterflies, or does God want to surprise them?”

How blessed we are to know our eternal potential and to know that we will become butterflies someday. Just as the butterfly has to be patient inside the chrysalis, enduring the slow, possibly painful changes, we can’t desire to have our wings with no trials and no perseverance. Maybe if the next time I’m tested by my circumstances, I can think that the pain is just my wings growing a bit more and I can have the patience to endure it.

Even though we have been blessed with the knowledge of the Lord’s plan, I don’t think we can really fathom the full magnitude of our potential partly because we need to learn it precept upon precept (and I have lots of precepts to go!), but also because God wants to surprise us.