The Butterfly Patch
Small Things That Carry Hope
I bought a butterfly patch on Mother’s Day. Iron-on. Small enough to fit in a palm.
My family served that day. My husband and I, with our two teenage sons. One son and my husband worked the kitchen, plating food and clearing it. The other son stayed near me and kept everyone in drinks. We do this together, and we enjoy it. It’s a way to give back and help people who need it. And it keeps a day from being only about us.
I’m the greeter. The encourager. The one who talks. The one who looks like she’s doing nothing. I’m not in the kitchen, and I’m not keeping the room running. I just walk around. I make sure no one comes through the door without a welcome, and no one leaves without a word.
There’s something about serving on a day when your own heart is heavy. You stop thinking your story is the only one in the room.
Most years, we plant something living for Meghan. Whatever the year afforded. This year, there was no ground to put anything in, so I bought a patch, and I’ll iron it onto the book bag I take everywhere. She’ll travel with me now in a different way.
I tell you about the patch first because the smallest things are usually the ones doing the most work.
It’s almost summer. The kind of week where the air finally agrees with you. The boys come back from baseball with red faces and grass on their knees, and you don’t have to argue them into a shower because they’re already too hot.
The people we serve come from every walk of life you can think of and a few you can’t. Some come tired. Some carry shame they shouldn’t have. Others arrive bright and chatty, and you’d never know what brought them through the door. A few come back week after week and don’t say much, but they keep coming, and that means something.
You cannot see what they are carrying.
You cannot see the weight on their heart, or the joy they woke up with this morning, or the loneliness that followed them in, or the abundance they’re not telling you about. You don’t see the loss in the chatty one or the love in the quiet one. The story you’d guess by looking is never the whole story. Usually, it’s not even close.
So you lead with kindness, because kindness fits every situation you can’t see.
What I have to offer is small.
A smile that means I’m glad you came. A hand on a shoulder if they want it. A few minutes of conversation that’s about them and not about what they need. A prayer, said quietly, by name, if they ask.
That’s the whole thing.
I used to think hope was a feeling. Something you had to summon up, like weather. You’d wait for the front to move through, and the hope would come back, and you could get on with your day.
I don’t think that anymore.
Hope is a butterfly patch on a book bag. It’s the planted thing when you have ground, and the iron-on thing when you don’t. It’s a touch on the shoulder of someone who came in shaking. It’s a name said in a prayer when no one else is saying it. It’s showing up to serve on the day your own heart hurts, because someone else’s hurts too, and you’ll both feel less alone for being in the room together.
Hope is the smallest possible act of saying, this matters, and so do you.
Spring is doing what spring does. The dogwoods are showing off. The grass needs cutting whether anyone’s mowing or not. My boys have sunburned necks. The dogs sleep harder in the afternoon heat.
We all miss her. We served that day anyway. The patch is on the book bag now, traveling with me.
All of it true, at once.
That’s the thing about this season. You don’t have to pick.