BENEFITS OF STRUGGLING

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared, he sat
and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body
through that little hole.

Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as
far as it could and it could go no farther. Then the man decided to help the
butterfly, so he took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of
the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily.

But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. The man continued to
watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would
enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time.

Neither happened!

In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a
swollen body and shriveled wings.

It never was able to fly.

What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand was that the
restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through
the tiny opening were God's way of forcing fluid from the body of the
butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved
its freedom from the cocoon.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If God allowed us
to go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would
not be as strong as what we could have been.

And we could never fly.

P.S. Everything I have achieved in the music business so far is because no human has helped me, so I learned a lot of things about music and the business, but also trained myself to be able to face hardships as they are and take both fails and vistories as lessons and stepping stones. I do business and collaborate with a lot of people, but it has always been favour for favour or just business. Nobody has ever just came up to me and said: "Hey, I just want you to get from where you are straight to the top and I want to help you out of my genuine intentions." If somebody ever helped me in music business I would not know about great things in songwriting, production, using software, engineering, organizing concerts and festivals, getting a band together, designing and printing CDs, web-sites and many many other things, but very important - patience and not giving up EVER, which I learned because I was on my own. I give thanks to the Lord for my struggles. I feel I am still in the cocoon, getting ready to get out of it and one day I will FLY.