When I was 35 years young with two beautiful young children, my husband worked the oil fields. I had graduated from college and was working as an artist and young mother. I was strong, able and independent when a spontaneous back injury of a ruptured disc that required emergency surgery, severely debilitated me with pain that changed the course of my life and the life of our young family.  I went from strong, able and independent to barely getting around and having to learn a new way of being in life with the constant searing of chronic pain.  It was not a death sentence but it was potentially death blowing to all I had known and enjoyed in my young life.

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In the context of the injury, I had memorized the words of Psalm 91.  Those words, that some days I would repeat continuously,  saved my life  from the terror of the pain I was experiencing, as they invited me more deeply into the realities of the realm of the Spirit that transcends the limitations of our physical lives and promises hope and deliverance. 

 

One day, during the season of the monarch butterfly migration, I was lying in bed trying to manage terrible pain when my daughter came through the door saying, “Mommy!  You have to see the butterflies in our tree!“ I felt like I could not even raise myself to go out, when my husband came through the door and said “You have to see this.” We had never seen a monarch migration before. He put his strong arms around me and walked me out to the old elm tree that stood by my small art studio in a field.  As we drew near to the tree, I could see life fluttering as though the tree where breathing.  Hundreds of monarchs had come to rest in its branches.  My husband held me under that old tree and said to me, “Jenny this is your promise of healing.”

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As we stood there together with our precious young children in the breath of the butterfly wings, I remember feeling tearful and hopeful that what he said was true and at the same time wondering how it would be so, as medicine had done all they could do for me.

 

As I moved on in life, I learned to live in new ways inside of a pained body. I tell you the truth, the monarch butterflies kept showing up in my life, in season and out of season, as though they were messengers of heaven to remind me of the promise of healing that heaven holds both within this life and beyond this life. They always gave me the gift of hope that kept my heart alive. 

 

Unpacking the phenomenal and miraculous mystery of the life cycle of the monarch butterfly and how it is a vision of hope, has been the journey of a life time.  God, in infinite wisdom and potential, invites me continually to let go of the limitations of my world, caterpillar like mind, into the spaciousness of my soul with the Spirit of Love. There, I have come to know the vibrancy of the soul in its original essence born of light and love in God and its beautiful story that helps us move through the sorrowful mysteries of our lives and celebrate the wondrous and beautiful mysteries born within us, in the most remarkable ways. 

 

Healing came in my life in many ways I had not expected. I was surrounded by the support and love of my family, beautiful friendships and spiritual communities, as God created within me a new story. It is a grand story that came through life experiences, dreams, prayers and meditations, through inner listening and the listening hearts of companions along the way, through gifted therapists and the gifts of the artists and the arts in all of their forms, through magnificent stories told and vivid imagination where all great stories unfold, through insights and flashes of visual seeing, through listening to and reading the inner journeys and reflections of brilliant teachers and contemplatives across generations of time, cultures and traditions, through the beautiful wild sacred text of the earth and through the beautiful sacred text of the ancient Hebrew and Christian scriptures that resonate so deeply in my heart and soul.

 

Healing for me has been an inside journey that has brought me to peace, in the deep sense of wholeness, through all the seasons and challenges of my physical journey. When my soul feels alive, the inner aliveness I feel, is stronger than the afflictions I have experienced. This is the grace of Divine love that will not let us go.

 

And I tell you the truth, Yeshua, the one whose name means deliverer and is known as Jesus, the Son of Man and the Son of God, Emmanuel, God with us, comes to me again and again in the Spirit of Love.  A man of suffering and many sorrows, that had experienced and knew the way through suffering, at a very young age, into the death that resurrects into life. It is truly a Holy mystery.  His Spirit of love, courage and integrity, gives my heart life and flight day after day, like the monarchs hovering in the branches of the old elm tree on that beautiful, hopeful day.

 

Funny thing how there are moments in our lives which become signs of things to come, that we can only see in hindsight.  When I was in my early twenties, in college one of my art instructors gave me poem written by an unknown poet saying, “I found a butterfly and on its wings were your name and God’s.”

 

The Monarch Mission was born to offer peace, hope, healing, joy and love within an aching and wondrous world. The practice and experience of the arts, inner listening and contemplation offer incredible medicine as they help us to move into the right brain of stillness and release ourselves to the realms of wonder, curiosity and new stories that flow through the magnificent Sacred Wild Wind that transforms our lives. Art and contemplation in all of their forms are beautiful gateways to the deeper realities that stir within all of us.

 

It is my hope and prayer that as you come to this space, you will feel supported to discover within yourself and the ones you care for, a spaciousness of heart and soul that resonates with the wells of inspiration within your own journeys of life that are ready to be born and take flight.

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From my heart to yours, Jennifer Steil

Founder of The Monarch Mission of Monarch Arts LLC