Do Not Become a Moth

Do Not Become a Moth

A letter I burned, a memory I kept, and the counsel that reached across the years to hold me

There was a boy once who saw me — really saw me — long before I was grounded enough to see myself.

I felt it across the choir room. I felt it from the gym floor at half-time, when our drill team performed and I knew, without looking, where his eyes were. And I felt it years later, in a crowded room, when I sensed his presence and turned and there he was, before I had any earthly way of knowing he’d be there. People call a thing like that a crush, but that word was always far too small — and to hear it named that way, even once, could crumble something holy, because it simply was not true. I never once — not a single time — thought of him that way. It was never wanting. It was something quieter and, I think, more sacred: the knowledge that the kindest, best, most genuinely good young man I had ever met considered me worth looking at. His sister told me once that none of the other girls compared. I did not keep that because I was proud. I kept it because, somewhere underneath, it told me something true about my own worth — something I would need far more than I knew.

He was, honestly, too much of everything for the girl I was then. I had no ground under me yet. I was flighty and laughing and joking with everyone, and near him my own personality would simply vanish, and it frightened me. So I ran. When he reached to hold my hand walking to a country dance, I pulled it away and called “I’ll race you!” and dashed off. When he came through my best friend’s wedding line, I shook his hand like a stranger’s. When a roommate called down from the balcony that he had come to see me, I answered, straight-faced, “___ who?” I had a dream in those days of the two of us swimming side by side — and in the dream, every stroke of his arm pressed me quietly under the water. I woke and understood it: he was too much, and I would disappear beside him. So I kept swimming away.

We married other people. He found a lovely, gifted wife and built a beautiful family, and I was glad for it. And still, all through the years, he kept turning up — an airport, a chance encounter, my sister-in-law mentioning that he was her home teacher, his own sister moving in just a few houses down from mine. I used to wonder, almost wearily, why this good memory kept returning to me, appearing and reappearing like something I was meant to keep remembering.

Once, our children swam against each other at a meet. I had my hair thrown up in a messy bun and had grabbed whatever was nearest in the rush to get everyone there — black yoga pants, black flip-flops, and, for once, two bright colors I would never normally pair, a pink and a soft yellow. Not a stitch of it chosen to impress. He stood fairly close at one point, and I never looked up. I didn’t need to. I already knew what that friendship had always been for.

Because years before any of that — when he was away at Army basic training and I was still in high school — I had written to him, grieving. Some friends had made choices I was sad about, and I felt the ground shifting under the things I believed in. And from wherever he was, in the middle of his own hard days, he sat down and wrote me back. Here are parts of what he said. This is the letter I photographed before, years later, I ever thought to be foolish enough to destroy it.

Dear Steffanie,

I have always admired you because you are so sweet to everyone and keep your standards high…

You are different because you want to keep high standards — different in a very good and special way…

Think of yourself as one of the elite people in this world who has the self-discipline and desire to stand up for what you know is right…

You are a beautiful butterfly that is light and free and brings a smile to everyone — do not become a moth…

Don’t worry, be happy. Sunny skies are coming your way and YOU will find your pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Keep Smilin’,

Love always,

(A dear friend from High School)

You are a beautiful butterfly… do not become a moth.

• • •

I did not understand, when I was sixteen, how far those words were going to have to travel.

There came a season, long after, when I was healing from separated ribs, breathing carefully, holding myself together in a marriage that had become a place of abandonment and betrayal and harm. What had been shown to me was a mirage — nothing like what it had promised, nothing like what others believed it to be. I was trapped, and I was so worn down that most days I could hardly name the danger I was in. And in that same depleted season, someone circled close — someone who saw exactly how parched I was, and let me know he could take advantage of me if he chose.

I was, in the truest sense of it, dying of thirst. And a moth that is dying of thirst will fly straight into the flame that kills her, only because it is the brightest thing in the dark.

That is when the memory came back to me — his sister a few doors down, a small living reminder, and rising up behind her the words themselves. You are a beautiful butterfly. Do not become a moth. A boy I had spent years running from had, without either of us knowing it, written me a lifeline and set it in my past so that it would be waiting for me at the very moment I needed it most. It reminded me what I was. It reminded me Whose I was. It pulled me back from the lure, and I did not fly into the flame.

To be wholly loyal — in body, in mind, in spirit — I burned all of the letters years ago. His, and the letters of dear missionary friends, and of boys I had cared for in college. I have wished a thousand times since that I had saved them, if only to show my girls one day that their mother was loved well and truly by good and honorable young men — that she was seen, and cherished, and told the truth about her own worth. But I photographed this one. And even without the paper, the memory has never stopped giving me strength.

And it was not only my girls I wanted to reach. When my nephews — tall, handsome, God-fearing young men — were leaving for college, I sat them down and told them plainly what a good man’s kindness had once done for me. I told my own sons the same. That their smiles, their courtesy, the respect they show women, the tenderness with which they treat their parents and grandparents and every soul they pass — these are not small things. That one good young man, simply by being good, can lift and steady and inspire a woman in ways he may never see, and can help point her, without a single word, toward the hand of the Savior. I am so grateful for that kind of masculine care. It is part of what helped me find His hand.

“For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat.”

— Isaiah 25:4

Thank you, dear friend. Wherever you are, with your beautiful family and your good life, you will likely never know what your letter did — how a few lines written by a young soldier to a high-school girl reached across half a lifetime and kept her a butterfly. But God knew. He always knew. And I am so grateful.

With love,

Steffanie