They That Wait… From Caterpillar to Butterfly by Crystal McNeil

“You need to leave.  This is not my will for you.”

A voice roared from the depths of my spirit as I stood in the vestibule, about to join my father to walk down the aisle.

“I can’t leave now!  His family is out there!  My parents have spent all this money and family and friends are out there waiting!” I said to myself.

I shoved this warning to the very back of my mind and made a choice to continue into my own will and marry my first husband, Andy.  I resigned because it was “cold feet”.  Everyone felt this, right?  I mean, I had heard about it before.

Romans 1:24-25 NKJV “Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, 25) who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever, Amen.

Having been saved and filled with the Holy Spirit at fourteen, after watching my uncle turn his life around, I knew better, but I wanted the fairytale.  Someone with whom I belonged and longed for.  I wanted and could envision myself with my prince, the white picket fence, and a few children.  Nevermind God’s will at the time.  We were only eighteen.

You see, I’ve never quite belonged.  Anywhere.  I’ve always felt like an outcast; I was never pretty enough, smart enough, athletic, or daring.  I was just a plain old country girl.  A simple caterpillar.  I was, however, extremely talented at wearing masks.  A chameleon. This was especially so when I was introduced to substances at sixteen.  Suddenly, I became the life of the party!  The girl who everyone wanted to mingle with.  This was also true of Andy, my first husband.  We met at a party, where we had all been drinking.  He saw this loud and feisty country girl, repremanding and fighting an older man, and decided I was the one for him.

It’s impossible to be a wife or love someone when you don’t love God or yourself.  After all, “God is love,” (1 John 4:8, 1 John 4:16) and I had never fully established my identity in Him.  I was selfish.  I was a brawling woman who felt I had something to prove. I was completely lost.  Mine and Andy’s relationship consisted of abuse from every kind, all of which I dealt out as well as received.  There was adultery, drug abuse, alternate relationships with women (homosexuality) and threats of suicide or violence when either of us had tried to leave.  We were caught up in a vicious cycle of darkness.

One night, he had left.  I was feeling hopeless and wanted it to be over.  I felt this overwhelming need to take my own life.  I found myself sitting in the floor with a kitchen knife at midnight when, suddenly, there was a knock on the door.  A sober friend, I hadn’t seen in years, had arrived.  I leapt into his arms and he agreed to take me to my parents’ house.  I later learned God had woken my mother from a deep sleep at that very same hour, across town.  He had allowed her to see me, in her spirit, sitting in a pool of my own blood.  She immediately began to pray for me.  God sent an angel, in the form of a friend, to hold back the enemy’s plan for me to commit suicide that night.  

James 5:16 “Confess your faults one to another, and pray for one another, that ye may be healed.  The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”

Another night, Andy and I were fighting as he was driving his 1978 Big Ten truck on Wolf Island Road in Madison, NC.  Before I knew it, he was driving 100 mph.  I provoked him to drive faster.  He lost control of the vehicle and drove into a pine thicket, knocking over several trees.  I wasn’t wearing a seat belt.  I remember trying to turn my body and getting into the floorboard of the passenger side of the truck, when the truck came to an immediate halt.  I walked away.  Neither of us understood the gravity of the accident until we saw the truck in daylight the next day.  The front of the truck was mangled.  The metal dashboard had been pushed into the windshield of the vehicle, the exact width and shape of my back, and the rear-view mirror had been broken off. I didn’t have a scratch or bruise.  I felt no pain.  When I tell you I walked away, I mean I didn’t have a single injury.  

Psalm  91:11-12 “Fore He shall give His angels charge over you, To keep you in all your ways.  12)In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a stone.”

I wasn’t even following Jesus, but He saw fit to deliver me that night.  He extended mercy.

Isaiah 40:31 “But those who wait on the Lord Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.”

Unfortunately, after separations, and other episodes, I wasn’t done.  There were several other incidents between Andy and I following those, many more lessons to be learned.  I’m a little stubborn that way.  I had suffered a miscarriage, which subsequently led to our divorce.  The enemy placed a lot of distractions in my life which included another failed marriage.  I was bound and determined to live my way, according to my own will.  I was afraid of being alone.  I was just a simple caterpillar.  Nothing special to anyone. I allowed myself to fall into one toxic relationship after another.  I was too impatient to wait on God’s perfect will, so he allowed me to have his permissive will.

By thirty-three, I was in yet another toxic relationship.  I found myself addicted, homeless in Burlington, NC, & helpless.  I didn’t care anymore BUT GOD DID!  He knew I loved my little dachshund, Lucy, more than I loved myself.  She became ill in our home, the back seat of my car.  I drove her to a veterinary hospital where they treated her and informed me she was dehydrated and stressed.  I was told I needed to get her to a safe place where she could rest.  The poor dog was feeling what I was feeling.  I got into the car and told the boyfriend I had to go home to my parents or she might die.  He called someone to come get him.  As soon as he got out of my car, I asked her, “Are you ready to go home?”, she happily jumped from the back seat to the passenger seat of my car as if nothing had ever happened! She was suddenly her spunky, playful self! God knew!!  God delivered!! Again!

A week later, I came to a point of desperation.  I had looked at myself in the mirror, after this time of drug use.  I really looked at myself.  My eyes were sunken in.  I could count every rib on my side and could fit a full fist into my pelvis. I looked like death. It was then I asked my mom to drive me to Alamance Regional Behavioral Health, in Burlington, NC. On the way there, I had realized God had allowed me to start my life completely over, from zero, seven times.  I knew this was my last chance to follow Him.

The Lord met me lying on a hospital gurney, staring at a yellow concrete wall in the hallway.  I cried out to him with everything within me, “Jesus, please forgive me.  I can’t do this alone.  Please help me!”  Since then, he has never left my side.  I have allowed him to order every step of my path.  I was in a dark chrysalis for a long time.  I thought I was all alone not even realizing Jesus was there with me all the way, allowing me to go through the darkness, never knowing He was transforming me even then.  Being in darkness is uncomfortable and painful.  We don’t realize the work He is doing in the meantime, when He allows us to go our own way.  It’s in the darkness where the necessary breaking happens which leads us to death or an inevitable surrender to Jesus and His healing process.

Today, I am no longer a simple, ordinary caterpillar.  I am a butterfly.  His butterfly.  Jesus has and is teaching me to spread my wings of self-doubt and discouragement into those of a new creation and find a new identity in Him.

2 Corinthians 5:17 “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”

Praise God!  He never gives up on me and is always doing a new thing in me!

Isaiah 43:19 “Behold, I will do a new thing, Now it shall spring forth; Shall you not know it?  I will even make a road in the wilderness And rivers in the desert.”

I am always amazed and remain grateful.  I believe that is the whole point of my darkness and the breaking:  a grateful heart.  Through it all, I have learned to depend on God’s word.  I have lived it and know it to be true. I have also resigned to remain steadfast in the love and correction of Jesus and the Holy Spirit.  BUT GOD!  He has blessed me with a wonderful husband who loves and desires to serve Him.  He has blessed us with a wonderful church in which we can grow and serve. He has blessed us with salvation and life everlasting.  We have been kept.

Jesus gave His life for me.  In return, I surrender my life to Him.

Matthew 16:24-26 “Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.  25) For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.  26)For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?  Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?’”