Butterfly Stitches recounts Michele Vrabel's profound journey of healing from emotional, spiritual, mental, and physical wounds. Throughout the book, she reflects on her traumatic experiences with abuse at the hands of her father and other figures in her life. Michele emphasizes that healing is a complex, ongoing process that begins at the moment of the wound, not a one-time event. She shares how her faith in her King Jesus played a critical role in guiding her through the darkest periods of her life, helping her to understand and clean out the deep emotional wounds that were inflicted. The concept of "butterfly stitches" is central, symbolizing the delicate yet transformative process of mending these wounds, leaving scars that serve as markers of survival and growth.
The pitch was coming fast. The bat got a piece of it. It was a split second and slow motion, and I could see it coming and could not avoid it at the same time. Knocked to the ground off my heels and staring up at a blue sky. I knew this kind of pain. There would be blood and some kind of stitches.
There is a split in the skin directly through my left eyebrow. Thanks to the underlying bone, not deep enough to require anything but a butterfly stitch. It held the area together while the healing began. A line where the original scar took up space remains today.
Healing never returns things "back to normal." Because I was created to value and fight for my life, for my health; emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and physically, the healing puts things back stronger.
Looking back through the stitches, to tell my story, magnified where the healing began each and every time. The wound wreaked havoc. My heart and mind began the examination to see how deep the scar would be. My Jesus showed me how to clean out the wound by helping me see what truly caused it and how to grow in the navigating.
I cannot say that at two years old I understood how the Holy Spirit was working in and through me. But I felt it. I could see that I had been reasoning it out, even then.
I am not telling my story to say that no one experiences a one-time come-to-Jesus healing. I am telling my story for those who do not. For those who have not stopped to write it down and see...there was Jesus.
It is hard and feels like it will never work out for good for anyone...especially me. Life is hard. More of my wounds and stitches came at my own hands and required the same metamorphosis of healing as those at the hands of others.
Butterfly Stitches is not a self-help story. Self never did me a lick of good. Getting out of my own way and realizing that true healing was going to begin with the One who created me.
Butterfly Stitches is the story of seasons of abuse as told by the wounds of my heart, soul, mind, and body in a teaching memoir. Each having witnessed a life from a different perspective. Some experiences looked similar, some completely different, but all create the total of a life.