A Butterfly’s Struggle to Break Free from Its Chrysalis

If I had a “signature art piece,” it might just be New Life. I finished this butterfly study the year I turned 28, and many fell in love with it because of the final scenes in the movie Joni. In this mixed media artwork, you can capture a glimpse of some of the questions for which I sought answers at the time.

Not long before I began work on this piece, my sisters and I took our family’s camper up into the Rocky Mountains. It was impossible for me to join them on their hikes, and one day, while they were gone and I was sitting alone in the camper, I felt discouraged and near tears. Suddenly a butterfly caught my attention. It struggled against the howling wind, fluttering past the window of our camper. The wild, mountainous terrain, so rocky and barren, did not look like a place for a butterfly!

That little winged creature seemed to represent God’s concern and love for me.

It was as though he sent the butterfly up the mountainside to show that he saw me sitting by myself in that camper. He knew where I was and how I felt. As I thought about that butterfly straining against the harsh high-altitude air currents, I reflected on the way it captures the symbolic beauty of the new life we have in Christ.

Like 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV) says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

I couldn’t wait to return home to paint the butterfly. At my art easel, I used ink, watercolor, and a whole collection of different implements. I wanted one kind of ink to smear and another to stay crisp; I found a two-inch-wide brush to create the sky washes in the background; I had a plan to use nearly half a dozen other tools, too.

Everything came together to portray a Monarch butterfly’s struggle to break free of its chrysalis, representing the hardships we as believers face as we become more like Christ.

The composition begins on the right side of the watercolor board, with a lifeless butterfly pinned to a fence (representing how we are dead in our sin). Leaves at the end of their life cycle cast a shadow on the beautiful, but dead butterfly. It might seem the end of the story, there on the far right. But a caterpillar moves nearby.

Then, within the shade of a leaf, we spot a chrysalis containing the pupa. A mystery happens in that chrysalis as it transitions from a pupa to the butterfly, not unlike the “mystery of the gospel” Paul talks about in Ephesians 6. It’s a picture of what happens to us who were once dead in our sins but now have been made alive with Christ. It’s all the Holy Spirit’s doing! 

Next, there’s a brand-new butterfly with wet, weak wings emerging from its chrysalis. Many have observed that a butterfly’s struggle to break free of the chrysalis makes its wings strong and able to fly. Our growth in Christ follows the same path, Acts 14:22 tells us:

“We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.”

We need to go through many struggles to become the person God wants us to be.

Finally, after its wings dry, the lovely creature sits on the tip of the branch. With nearly transparent wings, the butterfly looks ready to take off. The branch it rests on has been transformed, too.

I labored over this painting a long time ago, but I have often marveled how God uses the beauty around us to convey his love and concern for every detail of our lives. This butterfly symbolizes God’s infinite care and sovereign control over our circumstances, transforming us into a “new creation in Christ Jesus.”

Like the butterfly, I pray your heart takes flight in the joy of knowing the new life that is yours in Jesus.

– Joni Eareckson Tada