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.