Butterfly Chronicles: Volume 4

10 weeks, 1 day 

 

 In the sweet by and by,
We shall meet on that beautiful shore…

Day before Thanksgivng and Madison saw a butterfly, and Raeann snapped a photo and sent it to me. Zach’s going is teaching Madison to see the grace gifts and that is a thanksgiving moment and a butterfly moment, and a gift reminder from God that we will meet again on that beautiful shore.

I’m thinking on how do I give thanks this Thanksgiving?  And missing him twisting me and making it hard to breathe.  So I made a short list until I couldn’t cry anymore and there is so much thanksgiving mixed with heartbreak…

• Salvation.  Baptism.  Heaven-home.  Sealed.  Forever.
• The stink smell of boy sweat after lacrosse practice.
• Football Mohawk.
• Rough and tough hugs.
• Speaking “Australian.”
• Remote control fart machine during the Mormon visit.
• Surrounded by friends shooting, Xboxing, Minecrafting, Speedy Stop Icee’s on bicycles.
• Sleeping on the floor.
• Teaching me Xbox and my 6 kills and he was proud.
• Dirt cake mustaches.
• Monster trucks and Monster Truck Rallies and I’m so glad I went after all.
• Army Tank cake.
• Camouflage.
• Lake swimming.
• Thomas Tank days carving tracks across the carpet.
• A football hero who gave his all, bruised and bullied and him still smiling.
• Wars of white and green bb’s sailing toward targets, mom hollering across neighborhoods, “Are your eyes covered?”
• Matchbox cars.
• Cousin hugs.
• Homemade birthday and mother’s day cards full of boy words of love.
• Cheese and bread.
• Boy and dog and dog and boy and running, jumping, lifetime loyalty.
• Family of five, now four here and one there, but memories of five for always.
• Photos-photos-photos, him saying mom no more but snapping and snapping and so thankful I did.
• Santa pictures and toys and smiles and Christmas mornings.
• Thanksgiving running on golf course, cousins tumbling, squealing, joy-filled.
• Fleeting dinner moments when he actually liked what I cooked and me feeling so happy he did.
• Summer sand castles.
• Hunting trips and pulling ticks off boy and dog.
• Our alone lunches during SF.
• Love.  A man child I’ll never stop loving or missing or giving thanks for.

I will take this small very short list to the Thanksgiving this year and hold him invisible in my heart wishing for a hug, wishing for watching pie and ice cream dribble on chin, laughter, eyes sparkling.  I will be thankfully heartbroken for the boy who was here and is there.  In the sweet, by and by we will meet on that beautiful shore.   God, You know it is just so hard.  It is just so hard.  And I wonder if I'll ever stop counting the days from that day.  By and by on that beautiful shore...

Butterfly Chronicles: Volume 3

"A good many people never learn to sing until the 

darkling shadows fall." Streams in the Desert

9 weeks 6 days and Thanksgiving looms.

 Not sure how this is going to play out, but we're catering the day and inviting enough people so that we can disappear unnoticed into the never never land if it gets too difficult on a day I can't begin to even imagine.  And giving thanks?  How can I give thanks when Zach won't be there? And I know I should, should want to like in years past, counting untold blessings abundant.

  God is faithful; I am not.  The butterflies keep coming, and I keep asking for more, again, more and again...until I think He must wonder if I have brain damage...and then I realize He knows that I do, and He will be the only one who can heal it and halt the projector playing the horror movie that sneaks up on me and runs vivid in my head, that night over and over in my head.

A life is over - here.  But I said I believe in the there up there somewhere and desperately long for continued confirmation of the promise of that home eternal for my son.

Right now, I am deeply, utterly, completely lost.  And don't kid yourself by saying I'm courageous or brave or doing so well BECAUSE I AM NOT.  ALL IS NOT WELL WITH MY SOUL.  And all has not been well since the fall and this is NOT how God meant it to be and I'm really pissed off and can't even rally the goody two shoes Christianese that we all use on one another as we pretend all is well. I've been a fake Christian for too long.  One who was afraid of anyone seeing my warts because I'm so good because of Jesus and look at all the things I'm doing for Him, and amen and praise the Lord.  And what's up with people telling me lately they've been afraid to ask for prayer?  Where are we for those people and what have we done to keep them from asking?  Faking it isn't giving the truth in love.

The TRUTH is that God never pretended our souls would be well until eternity.  He tells us to be courageous, anxious for nothing, stand still for His deliverance, fear not, cast your cares on Me, and if he's our refuge and fortress and we need a refuge and fortress and a Savior hanging from nails on a cross, why would we think for one second that all is well?.  God knows how hard we've got it or he wouldn't be giving us all those warnings and admonitions and "how to's" on how  to survive down here. But do we REALLY pay attention?  I mean REALLY REALLY?  And do we REALLY care about each other when we can't even be honest enough to say we NEED prayer because we're all so BROKEN and don't want to admit - even to those who know it and won't show it - that we are ALL broken?  Or maybe it's just me and my dead son that's got me thinking about how we Christians put on a happy face, and I just can't do it anymore.

This horror has revealed and brought together friends who know I'm broken and they've told me their broken stories and they are like another butterfly amongst the others God has sent me.  And we can wear a crooked smile with eyes teared and running and tell the truth about where we are and who we are and where we are trying to get in God and pray for each other in truth.  We are broken, BUT GOD.

Impossible as it seems in the midst of all this revealing of His presence, while I watch His gifted butterfly moments and document them, it is still like they are happening to a different person.  There's a stomach churning realization that I really don't  know God at all or wouldn't I feel something?

Looking down the road of future, I can't yet see a place where I'll be knit together again.  But our girls and our marriage and our family and our friends are light, are hope, are worth the struggled climb back into a world of almost wholeness.  But aren't we all only almost whole...all we Christians still not quite right, still sinful, always trying to find our way back to whole?  Aren't we all?  And for a moment panic subsides and I come out of the haze of grief long enough to know Zach is whole and yet I still want butterflies.  And more, and again, and more because I'm still broken.

I think today on the "grief list" I am angry.  I hate that list.

The Butterfly Chronicles: Volume 2

It's been 9 weeks and 2 days.

"Remember, O God, that my life is but a breath; my eyes will never see happiness again." Job

Please don't get me wrong...I know Job had it way worse than our family has it.  We've always told our kids that someone always has it worse.  Zach answered this one day with, "Except for the guy who has it the worst".  And Zachery was correct...there is one guy who had it the very worst...Jesus Christ.  And I am trying really hard to believe in Jesus Christ right now.  My heart and head are completely severed and the intellectual part of me knows how God has worked and continues to work, but my heart doesn't really care or even believe it at this point.  I'm split down the middle.

Have I completely lost my faith?  Maybe...but I know God is full of grace and trying to give it back.  This is where the butterflies come in.  I guess Volume 1 of the butterfly stories starts here:
 
http://ihaveaneternaladdress.blogspot.com/2011/10/butterflies.html

I currently live my life praying over and over and over again for God to continually prove to me that He is there and that Zach is okay. Most of the time I'm a Gideon and doubting Thomas.  The doubts and anger are so overwhelming, I'm grouchy, my fuse is too short, I cry and wail hiding in the bathroom, or  nuzzled with my head shoved into my husband's chest.  And frankly, if this tragedy is how God uses me...thank you very much - I DON'T WANT TO BE USED,  I mean, how can blessings come out of this and really - God will have to show me these things in order for me to believe them and even then I know it will be hard.  REALLY hard.  It IS really hard.

So what the hec is up with the butterflies, and the other stuff that keeps popping up?  I need a statistician to unravel the mystery.  If He is actually answering my prayers, which I believe the statistics would show clearly, then why can't I feel it, believe it in my heart, and am I even supposed to yet if everything only happens in God's right timing?  So much pain...and I see it in the bodies and eyes of my husband and our daughters and our family...it hangs and drapes around us like thick smoke, choking us day after day after day.


I'm at "the house," and being there never gets easier so far, and I'm doing laundry, and reading my Ann Voscamp book when she discusses the Luke 18:41 verse where Jesus asks the blind man, "What do you want me to do for you?"  Wow!  Did that get me started!  I poured it all out, venom through pen onto paper.  What do I want you to do for me???  Peace, comfort, healing, freedom from this pain, confidence in who YOU are, knowing beyond certainty that YOU are here and Zach is okay and in heaven, to understand the WHY and to know that all those promises we hang our hats on are REALLY true...THAT's what I want You to do for me...all  this as tears splashed and muddied the page.

I stormed through the house to find my Bible so I could read that Luke verse for myself.  The Bible I found,  I flipped open on my trek to Luke.  Opening to Isaiah, The Book was marked with a face down book marker.  Flipping it over, I read these words:

...whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, 

whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, 

whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent

or praiseworthy--think about such things.

HUH??? (Cause I sure hadn't been doing that even in a small way.)  A small tingle wove its way through my body.  I flipped again and landed in Mark where an old face-up birthday card  from my mom marked the page.  There,on the front of the card, butterflies.  This card is at least five years old and stuck in an old Bible which had been stuck on a shelf for a long time.

Almost every day since Zach's funeral, I've seen at least one butterfly, and on some days as many as thirteen.  On cards, live sightings, gifts from people who know the butterfly story - but they've always arrived when I'm begging, and pleading, and screaming from the depths of pain at God to prove He is there.  I'll tell you more in the next volume...cause I know I write too much for the fast pace we all live where we don't slow down long enough to SEE the butterflies.  Do you "stand still" long enough to notice the messages God sends?  I never did before.

That verse up there, about thinking on good things - that  verse was placed on our pillows at an event we attended last weekend... and that card from my mom in my Bible, I used it as a book mark in my Ann Voscamp book on the trip.  It fell out on the floor when I was in the bunk house alone, crying and praying again for God to reveal Himself again, and one more time, again!  The card landed back side up this time (which I hadn't seen before) and on the back were TWO BUTTERFLIES, so little glimpses of  grace keep popping up through the storm.  

As long as it takes, I'll be chronicling the sightings and how they've come...a butterfly soap mold for a craft at the weekend event, a CD with a butterfly on the cover, a card with butterflies inside and out from someone who only found out 3 days ago about Zachery and who doesn't know anything about the butterflies, a picture gift of a butterfly arriving in the mail from a butterfly photographer who read this blog which someone sent to her randomly, and on and on and on, and you can decide for yourself if the sightings and statistics prove anything.

Maybe I'm doing this to encourage me, maybe I'm doing this to encourage you, but ultimately I'm doing it to find my faith again, and to know that Zach is where my head believes he is.  The hurt of missing him can only be lessened by the God who knows my mind and my heart and who can glue me and my family back together. 

Please, God, send me the butterflies.  And then send them again. And then send them again. And then send me some more. 

Thy Will Be Done?

I've been challenged lately by Ann Voscamp's book One Thousand Gifts.  From what I've read so far, she is on a quest to understand God’s grace and how to give thanks even in the most devastating circumstances.  At one point, she asks the question, "Do they whisper grace in the house of the dead boy?"  Considering that we can't go back there to that house yet and are leaning on the Lord and surrendering those "home" decisions to Him, we aren't whispering grace there for now or maybe forever.

But, those whisperings of grace do come.  The rememberings of that boy are warmth and joy and pain right now all warped and twisted together.  One grace is that although the pain won't ever fully be gone, I believe the warmth and joy will overtake and weigh down the tears over the course of a life.

My husband understands that the boy was always, eternally from the past, only allotted thirteen years.  Knowing simultaneously all the intricacies of a life, God determined the home going moment for His purposes.  How many of us flippantly remark, "Thy will be done," and only really mean it when things are going OUR way?  Perhaps for sure I was one who said this without even knowing what it would or could really mean.  Would I have prayed "Thy will" knowing what I know now, and would I have been able to really mean it?  Is my faith that big?  (Not even close...but how could I know that until this?)

Whatever God is working out, faith is sometimes kicking, screaming, heart wrenching acceptance.  Life has to be a walk by faith, not by the sights I've seen.  Ultimately, I am struggling to understand that God's grace in Zach's death is His ultimate act of love for our boy.  In my brain, this reality is bent and sharp and cutting and will only make sense if He translates it.  Called home, Zach has been released from sin and is truly free, forever - love of God, a gift, grace.  The pain and the joy intertwined and inseparable, but God...I don't pretend to know how He'll work it out, I just know He already is.

Thy will, even now, with what I know and the pain I feel, Thy will be done, and teach me how to mean it, not when things are going my way but Yours.

The Author of Neverendings

Last week, commencing on Friday and culminating in the gala event on Sunday, I RSVP’d to a black tie formal pity party.  I wallowed in it.  Refused to talk myself out it.  Succumbed to the sultry seductive hiss, hiss, hiss of Satan’s licking lies massaging my brain.  Whispering failure, regret.  Blowing a hot breath of doubt, fear, guilt, shame, and caressing my mind close to the gaping hole of evil’s heart of darkness.

I knew what I was doing. Over and over, I kept reminding myself that walking or not through this open door to black, empty darkness is an everyday choice.  At any moment, I could choose to pray my way out of it.  My hand could turn on the light in my soul, and I could reenter the peace and presence of God.  But I didn’t want to, said no, slid deeper.  I was so tired.  So sad.  So debilitated by it all.  I couldn’t even pray. Yep, I wallowed – like a pig in slop – gowned in manure fully aware of the stench.

     “Did you ever have days when you couldn’t pray?” I eeked out between tears splashing on the keyboard.

     “He hears your groanings,” she replied knowing it is true because He answered hers.

On Sunday, I gave up.  Gave it all up.  Poured the garbage into my journal.  Begged God to stop the seductive voice of counterfeit truth, to refresh, heal, expunge, bleach me back to light, not even knowing if I truly believed He could.  And He did.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.

You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?

Grief is okay.  Jesus wept.  Moderation is the golden nugget.  The Truth is that when we allow grief to overwhelm us to the point where it impacts our ability to function in life and carry out God’s plans for us, then it is no longer grief.  It is sin.  And I was sinking in it until dumping it out at the throne of grace.

I’m heartbroken.  But I have to remember that is not all I am.  I am the blessed mother of three unbelievable children who take my breath away.  Zach is Home.  The girls daily paint my life with their laughter, hugs, smiles, tears, and love and daily teach me life is still full of joy, and reason, and God.  I am a wife with the gift of a husband who cradles my sobbing shell in his arms until the flesh and bones and blood come back to feeling life and not death, who lives the promises he made at “I do,” who makes me so much better than I could ever be alone, who practices love as a verb.  I am a member of an earthly family and a family in Christ who circle around me like Spartan warriors protecting my gossamer skin, no longer thick and calloused, from the tail of the slashing dragon.

Because I am redeemed, I can halt that serpent’s whisperings of sweet nothings in my ear.  When it is quiet, God reminds me that for Zach, death is not loss; it is gain. It is eternal presence in His light. God hears and sees and recalls to my mind that He is the Author of the happiest of neverendings.  Zach is in His presence living that adventure.  In Christ, I can rest, and I can wonder at how green the heavenly lacrosse fields must be…