A year ago, today, I wrote my last blog entry. Eleven months ago, today, I lost my job…for not the first time (see last blog entry). Over the course of these last months I finished a dissertation, bought a minivan, turned down perfectly good job offers, moved back to a city I love, twice, spent time with dear ones until my heart overflowed, came to know more deeply who I am and what I am made for and what I am not. And it wasn’t always pretty. In fact, it was downright messy.

My mom has a thing for monarchs. I was already out of the house when she developed this passion, so I never experienced it personally. This year in my jobless, nomadic state I happened to be present for the extravaganza that was Chez Monarch at a nondescript house in a small town in Maine.

The monarchs made abundantly tangible, that becoming requires (produces?) a lot of…well, a lot of poop, to put it delicately.

And it isn’t the glamorous sort of mess. It smells and it is everywhere. The caterpillars are growing so much and so quickly that they shed their skins five times before going into a chrysalis. And the byproduct is…well, mess. And so it is with us, so it was with me. Growing is messy and along the way it often gets stinky and appears, if you only look quickly, to be just a whole lot of s@$%.

And yet.

I have come to believe that the messiness is the way to becoming. I long to increase my tolerance for the messiness of my growth and those in my care. I still wonder what it will take for me not to get distracted by the smell and my longing for order and neatness, for control, so that I can lean wholeheartedly into my own becoming and that of those I love.

Here is what I learned from the monarchs.

We come equipped with what it takes for our becoming, with a little help. I never knew that the tiniest of monarch caterpillars contains its own chrysalis. The chrysalis isn’t an external adaptation it is the bursting out, in the fullness of time with the necessary nurture, of what was inside to begin with.

In spite of this truth, a lot can go wrong along the way. And at least at Chez Monarch, the environment required to allow those tiny caterpillars to become who they were made to be required terrariums and milkweed runs and shielding from sun and rain and wasps and a whole myriad of unseen terrors.

And yet.

Here is the thing I have come to believe. Growing and becoming is hard and messy and often doesn’t go as we hope it will go. But when it does…oh when it does, it is stunningly beautiful. And it demands a sense of awe and wonder and joy. My youngest nephew is 3.5 and he unabashedly reveled in the gift of being witness to becoming done well.

It got me thinking about how often I, we, as humans begrudge the messiness and the uncertainty of becoming for ourselves and others. And our begrudging seems to blind us when it comes to the holy, sacred moments where we ought to pause and be filled with wonder at what we are witnessing.

If nothing else, on an anniversary I sometimes would rather not remember, on the eve of beginning a new adventure, I hope I will revel in the messiness of becoming, as I hold tightly to the picture of the awe and joy and wonder embedded in its heart.