Butterfly Chronicles Volume 33: A dead Son changes everything

Grief is such a strange animal, raising its head in the most mysterious ways, catching me off-guard, unprepared, always surprised at the intensity.  The way life has changed is still something we are learning to grasp.  A birthday, a dirt cake, a party, Zach's empty chair.  Visitors smiling, hugging, singing, the party in full swing.  But when no one is looking, I looked.  I see the sad eyes searching for an answer to the why?  Eyes missing him, and smiles trying but not hiding the sad.

We hurt for all of us.  Grief makes people uncomfortable.  So uncomfortable – for everyone.  Avoiding people, wearing sunglasses, keeping my head down, a cell phone pasted to my ear only pretending to talk, so I don’t have to talk because I might burst into tears just because you are holding your new baby, and it reminds me of Zach and how small he was until I brought Madison home from the hospital, and that tiny Madison baby made Zach look so big, and that memory welled up in me, and made me cry when I saw her, my friend, holding her brand new baby and seeing how big it made her toddler look now that her tiny new baby was home.  All that welling up just from seeing a new baby.  I couldn't even ask her to hold him.  My heart ached, I started to cry, I made her uncomfortable, and she thought she had made me uncomfortable, and she hadn't at all; it was just all those memories. We don’t want to cry or make anyone else cry, but how can we help it?

A child won't talk about Zach because she worries about making me cry.  I tried to explain that nothing she can say will make me feel any sadder than I already do.  I will probably always be sad, but life keeps going, and we just live through the sad.  Tears are like a tea kettle.  If the top doesn't come off, if they don’t pour over, if the pressure isn't released, that tea kettle will just scream and scream at someone, something, sometime, anytime.  I try to make her understand that tears are not bad.  That they help.  But still she is silent.

So everything is new, and surprising, emotionally erupting, and the best medicine is to stay busy.  “There’s a whole lot of vacuuming going on around here.”  Just stay busy.  Keep the mind focused, moving forward.

The Truth is that a dead Son changes everything. For God so loved every single person in the whole world, He loved us all so much, that He gave up His son as a gift for you and me.  A dead Son changes everything.  I hope that these notes about faith and grief and hope reach one person – just even only one person – with the message of that dead Son who changes everything for eternity.  Believe on that Son – that Savior – that Jesus who died to make a way to perfect goodness and a way to God which we can’t make ourselves.   I know a God who knows me and knit me and knew where I’d be right now even though this grief is the most painful hurt I’ve ever known.  And He knows you too from before time began.

A dead Son changes everything.  I want people to know that my dead son is only physically dead because His son, God’s Son, made a way for my son to live in the presence of the God I know - forever.  God, don’t let Zach’s death be in vain.  Use it to make a difference for that one person who needs You.  You gave Your son and took the one you lent me back.  Use Zach to make Your gospel known – just even to only one person.  That would make me smile even through my tears.  Even if it is is just one.

God, give us the courage and strength to keep living, to not waste the life you've given us, to not let Satan stop our desire to glorify you in the way we live.  Give us courage to live in light of eternity rather than in light of our pain and constant ache for Zach.

For God so loved every single one of us right where we are no matter where that might be that He sent His Son to pay the price for all of us who don’t measure up to perfection.  His gift is ours by simple acknowledgement of what He did for us and that we need what He did for us.  Believe on that Son, Jesus, who died, was buried, and who rose again to save us.  Believe and be saved.  Just one, Lord.  Just one person changed by your Gospel because of Zach.

A dead Son changes everything; He died and rose again so that He could hold my son.  I believe.  I am saved.  Zach is saved.  Be saved.  That dead Son, Jesus, alive forever, changes everything.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 32: My Baking Bonafide Butterfly Beholder

In Him we live and move and have our being.

 

Madison is like a pair of binoculars, ever spotting the highly unspottable, the almost missed, the hidden treasure, the whisper of butterfly wings always.  Life marches.  She will turn 12 in a few days.  I wonder how her memories of 11 will be affected by Zach.  She is strong.  Witty.  An old soul in a young body.  She gets life.  And she's one of those special people who gets jokes way above where her young mind should be perched and she laughs and that makes us laugh and Taylor and Zachery were always shaking their heads saying, "What's so funny?"  And Madison always knew.

The other day, I poured over into a blog all my tears and words and pain and then unexpectedly, accidentally deleted it.  I was overly bothered about the deletion until Madison said, "Well, I guess God didn't want you to publish that one."  Hmmm.  So wise.  So sure.  So clever.  So deep.  She just gets it.  And she's so right about that blog.  I was trying to explain how life is different and how I understand how people just want to move away and be somewhere where no one knows about the death and it was really too much.

That day, the day the blog was erased, I had eaten lunch with two of my tribe members.  (Yes, I belong to a tribe of tribal screaming, praying, laughing, aching, loving women.)  As always, I try really hard to ask them about their boys -  Zach's friends.  And they tell me and mostly it is okay.  But that day, we talked and laughed and talked and they told stories about the marathon XBOX multi screen multi player multi XBOX boxes and 8 hours of only take a break to eat or pee kind of 8 hour marathon of XBOXING.  And all of a sudden it was too much son talk and Zach wasn't there for that play day and I just almost swallowed my own throat trying to hold down the tears.  And that's why I know how it feels to want to leave it all behind and start over, new, somewhere where no one knows.  But life marches and I don't want to march away from those who love us best.

Sometimes I feel bad about my blog because there's not a whole lot of sunshine in it.  But that's what I use it for.  To pour all the clouds and wintery cold winds and blustery gray days of deep sad onto those pages to GET THEM OUT of me!  And it helps and I can see the sunshine again - at least for a while and sometimes for longer than just a while.

And that's where baking and butterflies come in.  This morning, Madison spotted a sparkly spangled monarch and took pictures for me because she's just that way.  Kind, sweet, always thinking of me and the butterflies and what they mean to me.  It's really the only acknowledgement of Zach that she ever makes - those butterflies.  She points out those butterflies but won't mention Zach's name - almost no mention at all for 6 long months.  And I wonder what is going on in that amazing brain she belongs to.  What in the world is she thinking about it all or is she even thinking about it at all or does she ever wish she was somewhere else too?  Whatever she's thinking, she doesn't say much about it and less when we ask.

So today, we baked.  The first baking symphony choreographed on our new kitchen stage.  And we danced and we lunged, plunged cookies in and dipped to drag them back out of ovens.  And it is a quietly sad happy kind of day where the sad is behind the happy instead of in front.  And I like it that way.  Sad second and happy first.

And it is Madison's fault, gift, doing, giving of this happy being first in front of sad day.  And the tiny not gluten free bite bit out of that cookie I took was YUMILICIOUS. And the after cooking symphony continues - the sisters giggle and happy talk pirouettes on toe tips drifting to find me at this desk, and they, ever laughing, eat cookies in the kitchen. 

Life marches no matter what. Thank you God for a day where happy is first in front of sad and giggles leap.  Only in You do I really LIVE no matter where sad or happy land.  In You I live and move and have my being.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 31: Broken Bones and Butterflies

Only He remains the same.

 

This past week, my nephew broke his leg – fibula and tibia all the way through to a leg waggle where that leg should’ve been straight and strong.  Drilling into the bone, the Docs inserted a never to be removed rod which his bone will eventually grow around.  Walk, they said.  Day after surgery, walk they said and he did.  Crutched, drip lines dangling vinelike from veins, he walked on that bone severed rod inserted leg.

Candy and snack laden, we went to visit this beautiful boy in the hospital.  I was ambushed by emotion – his pain, the damage, the drugged boy not quite himself but still him, all grown up but still the fair haired boy I held as a baby.  I was overcome.  Emotions tornadoing.  Relief that he was okay and a stake through the heart pain that even in this pain, he is still alive and I am so glad.  I couldn’t lose another.  No rod strong enough to hold together more broken heart.  And he’s still hurt and we still wait to see if all is well and pray.  But he breathes and I am thankful.

I thought in that hospital visitor’s chair that I would give anything to have Zach in a hospital bed with only something broken – even needing the rods inserted kind of broken but still breathing broken.  I am living a life where I don’t know who I am or who I’ll be or what will uncork the tear flow.  Today it was a chocolate butterfly in a plastic yellow butterfly dotted bag with a Godiva tag.  A gift.  And the tears seeped through the dam crack and then flooded and I had to hide in the bathroom – again and again.

And life keeps coming.  The culmination in sight, Taylor’s graduation is drifting unstoppable and ever closer.  Already wondering how I will feel watching that public slideshow memory march of Taylor’s babyhood to 12^th year pinnacle on that slideshow screen.  How would a mother father grandparent aunt uncle not be teary even if Zach was here?  But Zach will be there on that screen loving his sister, them so close and together and smiling and breathing.  Heartbeats tapping through time, a rhythm of life joy.  And seeing that and we will just have to breathe through it.  All of us, never knowing if we’ll be smiling or so sad from the weight of ten thousand thousand tears.  We are all different and unsure of what happens in even the next moment.

Always asking the unanswerable questions – how did we get here? Why?  Why did this happen?  Why didn’t we know?  What could we have done?  An unending circle of endless questions with no door to open for answers.

 

And we are still recovering from two moves in 10 days and still unpacking and we are tired and bittersweet happy.  Together, Michael and I slowly unwrapped the plastic holding those Zach drawers shut.  Those drawers full because we couldn’t face the insides before.  Time now to empty them and give a new life to that dresser.  That dresser full of his life starting a new life.  Everything new everywhere – this whole life we live – all different and unknown and unsure.  And Zach there in every molecule of every item in every corner of those drawers we unpacked and repacked.  Tears dripping and heart pain throbbing and that panic ever pulsing at the back of my neck stealing my air.

His white ribbed “gangster” tank tops that became a joke between us sleep folded now on a shelf in my closet.  The green jersey he wore and warred in on that football field hangs lifeless, but I play the memories alive in me.  And Jonathan with his broken bones and rod breathes.  And I am so thankful for rods and broken bones.

If you meet me and I can’t look you in the eye, forgive me.  Sometimes I hide in the grocery store. If you invite me and I say no, forgive me.  If you call, sometimes I can’t answer even though I skip a beat wondering if there is tragedy on the other end of that ringing phone.  There is no moment when I am sure of what the next moment will feel like.  I don’t even know who looks back at me in the mirror.  The only thing I can think about who I am is that He knew me before there was time and He knit me together and holds me together and I am changed and only He remains the same.  These days seem harder than the first days.  The wall of numb fell like Jericho, and I am left standing wishing I was invisible.  Six months.

 

“Isolating?” asks Peter M.D.  I find that yes, I am doing that more and more, and I won’t tell him that and my friends will be pushy and limit the isolation, but it is survival.  There’s only so much real life I can survive right now.  And I never quite know when enough is too much.  I love that song that says “fear is just a lie.”  I hold on to that – that this fear I feel is just a lie.  What work God is doing I know not.   I can barely take one step after another and what work He is doing He will do.  It’s like I’m suspended again in the pre-birth amniotic fluid waiting to be reborn – this place of being so weak that letting Him walk me is easy because I’m too weak to get in His way with my way for once.  And every day, He gives me butterflies.  And I believe Zach is in those butterflies and knows about those butterflies.  And I tell him hello.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 30: Timberrrrrrrr

Grace.  Lost and found.

A deep hollow voice in the green woods echoed today, "Tiiiimmmmbbbeeerrrrrr!!!"  Yup, right before I melted down in the public of those I hold so dear.  Face first, full tilt, splat.  Heartache, hormones, and home relocations mix like alcohol and tranquilizers - big, Big, BIG mistake...

Yesterday I wrote about not knowing me anymore.  Today, I proved it.  Thinking too strong, too capable, trying too hard to be "normal", to do "normal", to not ask for help, to not even be able to look past this moment to know I need help...this is all me.  Nuclear fall out me.  And to top it all off, I did all of this in front of my Madison.  Ugly.  It was just shameful.

Grief is like that proverbial thief in the night.  It tiptoes in and robs me blind before I even know I've been hacked.  I emotionally suckered punched myself and spewed it all over a group of people who least deserved it.

I apologized.  No excuses.  Difficult circumstances, yes, but no excuses.  A strange place to live - not knowing when the rubber band is too taut and might snap.  I felt ashamed, embarrassed, sorry, and just plain emotionally spent.  I hope they will forgive me - give me grace.

Driving home, I thought about how so much of what happened today stems from Zach's death.  I don't exactly know how to keep moving forward when my umbilical cord with Zach is so thick and holding me so tightly. 

Before the fallout today, my first butterflies came on a card from Reanne.  When I arrived home today - post flat face fall, my sister had delivered a butterfly to my door.  Later my sister came over and told me about a live butterfly that was flying around outside my backdoor and finally alighted on my butterfly garden - a butterfly gift from Kim.  In the very middle of one of those milkweed leaves was a perfectly yellow butterfly egg.  Just when I needed to find butterflies the most.

I fell flat.  God said, "So what, now what?"  And He is always right.  Now what, Beth?  What I am learning is that I need to be different.  From moment to moment, all the time - especially from today.  Every moment is a chance lost or found for the Lord.  Today I lost, but He found me like He always does.  Death is devastating.  But it is a circumstance not an excuse.  I miss Zach in a way I can't describe.  A circumstance, not an excuse.  We have an amazing God who finds us even when we are lost.

I got lost - again.  But He found me - again, just like he always does.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 29: Just Different

 Be Still and know that I am God.         

Over the course of 10 days, we moved two times plus some – old house into storage one weekend, out of storage into new house the next.  And then we moved all our stuff out of my parents’ home after accepting their patient, generous, and gracious hospitality for more than 5 months.  Moving all by itself is top10 stressful so we took the double black diamond slope down that mountain.

Never did I try to believe that moving would make things better.  Not going to the old house is easier, but okay is something I will never be again – I’ll just be different and wandering through that new forest of self with all the shades of green is a creepy, strange, sometimes sunny, often times simply sad place to be.  I don’t know me anymore.

Around and around and around the inside of our new home, Zach boxes plant like trees. Zach trains, Zach hunting, Zach balls, Zach fragile, Zach closet, Zach, Zach, Zach, our Zach everywhere but not there.  I try not to look at those boxes and can’t explain the pain and panic and wall without windows and doors trapped feeling that clamps onto me when I see those boxes.  I feel that stuff, that life, that baby, that boy, that son.  Opening those boxes like ripping open a stitched wound.  I can’t.  Not yet.  I don’t want a Zach shrine, but what’s there to do with those memories all tied up and rooted in all that stuff in all those boxes?

Stuff in boxes, a life packed away, a suitcase-less, empty handed journey to the story of neverendings – a mansion prepared in advance, a new home.  A lovely journey to heaven it must be leaving all the weight of this life’s stuff behind…the imperfection, the guilt, the anger, the fear, the incomplete souls left wrecked at the Fall, all finally falling away.  Zach didn’t take any thing with him, just the eternal knowledge he stored up from what God taught him on his way through this breath of time to timelessness.

My life now is the double edged sword with bitter blade on one side and sharp sweet on the second.  How did we get here?  Where to go next?  I hope.  I hope and cry and hope.

The numbness ebbs away.  Coming straight at me – life living – climbing from the cocoon.  Today, I felt speeded up, felt panic at the thought of returning to a pace where I wouldn’t see butterflies.  Why death to make me slow, s l o wwwww.  Slow down.  I don’t want to go fast, faster, faster still.  Life is fast enough without me running racing sweating fighting flying faster faster faster through days and nights.  Do I really want to live where God is first?  Or do I want to get back onto the Satan Speedway where wisps of God fly by outside my racing window where butterflies don’t exist because I can’t grasp God when I’m not being still.  How much of my day is spent racing – my heart, my mind, my mouth, my feet, ticktockticktockticktock the clock won’t stop.  Or won’t it?  It is a choice that ravaging rocket race and a choice that gentle caressing living through flower gardens swelling with life aromas. It is a choice.  Zach made a choice.  Daily, I have a choice to make.

God, give me the courage, the strength, the intelligence, the calm gentle presence of You, to pour like golden honey through this life and to refuse the race, to give up what’s at that finish line bodies juggle past me fighting to reach.  Keep in the forefront of my mind that the finish line I so often see isn’t even on Your track.  Grow me to be still and know.  I want to know you God.  I want to know who’s holding my son and who gave up His son so my son could be held.

I will never be okay.  But sometimes okay isn’t good enough.  Sometimes I just need to be different.  To be different and to stay different.   I just want to be still and know the God who will make all things right.  The God who makes Zach all right.  I want to see the butterflies.  He sends them every single day.  My pain is great, but my God is greater still.  Be still and know.