Butterfly Chronicles Volume 36: Relationships

Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.

Relationship.  That's what we're called to have.  Christ wants relationship not religion.  In living a different life without Zachery - living with his death, living a whole new family life - this has caused me to really, deeply contemplate my relationship with the Lord.  Before Zachery died, I was a Christian.  I believed.  I studied, read, learned, attended a Bible study church; my faith was strong.  But it was as strong as a cheap, wet paper napkin - and I didn't even know it.

It's funny how I kinda lived life thinking I was really something in the Lord.  Having studied and memorized many verses as a child, I could quote my Bible, tell the stories, share the Gospel, and "be" a Christian.  What I know now is that "being" a Christian isn't the same thing as being in a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Think about the hallmarks of remarkable relationships:  honor, integrity, trust, loyalty, honesty, steadfastness, kindness, caring, selflessness, love through thick and thin til death do us part.  Relationship.  I'm only now beginning to understand that idea - Christ wants relationship.  Before Zachery died, I didn't really comprehend the idea of complaining or yelling or screaming or laughing at or with God, with Jesus.  But isn't that relationship?  Aren't the best relationships those where we can bare our souls, hearts, hurts, scars, hilarity, joy, laughter til tears.  Isn't that relationship?

How did I miss that simple concept.  I won't put it tritely - Jesus doesn't want to be my friend.  He's the holy God, creator of the Universe - not my friend.  But He is my champion.  He is my Savior.  He is my grace.  He is who I can crawl to with my best and worse - I mean He already knows it all anyway - so why have I been slow to grow to know that He wants me to share it all with him - the good, the bad, the ugly - and so often what I need to share is bad and ugly. Yep, that's me.  That's honestly me and Lord, You already know.  So what did I miss and why didn't I talk and speak to you like we are in a real, tangible, loving relationship?  How did I not know how to pray and that prayer is conversation, truth, all of it - complaining, screaming, laughing, sharing, loving - all of it.

Relationship.  To have relationship, I have to trust, honor, be loyal and steadfast, cry out in joy, pain, love, hate, imperfection, scarred, brokenhearted, and laughing.  He wants it all.  Imagine that.  No matter what it is, He already knows.  His grace is ALREADY sufficient for me - even if I am just figuring out what that really means.

I read a poster on Pinterest the other day that said,

"Sometimes the things we can't change end up changing us." 

 Wow.  Truth.  Zach, I can't change.  And that has changed me.  It has changed my relationship with Him and with everyone else.  Every day the butterflies come.  Every day I realize that the more I know the Lord, the more inexaustible He becomes and the more humble I grow knowing that if I were to read and study, study and read God's word every second of every minute of every hour of every day for the rest of my life, I'd still be barely out of the "milk" stage.  Relationship.  Give it to Him.  He will carry the burden of all those things we can't change which change us.  Relationship.  Trust Him.  He knows already everything we wish He didn't know and He loves us anyway.  Imagine that.  The Holy God, creator of the universe, Savior - He loves us anyway.

Relationship.  He will give you rest.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 35: He Can Do It

There have been lots of live butterflies today.

Lately, I’ve been choked by guilt.  Guilt is difficult to overcome and forgiveness impossible.  Forgiveness for all the lists of things I wish I could change and all the “ifs” that line up one on top of the other.  I don’t want to be a whiner.  There have been good days, even great days.  A 47^th surprise party given by the man who still makes my palms sweat and who still makes my heart pound and who is really the only other person who knows exactly what I am going through – there have been good days.  And there are good things, people, friends, family.  It’s only that those good days take so much out of us that we recover as if we’ve been hit with all of this all over again.  Never knowing what will wipe us out is tricky.

Which brings me to this whole idea of isolation.  First of all, Peter MD asks me about it every time I check in, and I always tell the truth.  Raeann and the tribe are too pushy to let me isolate completely, but that’s pretty much all I want to do.  The need to hide and avoid and be invisible comes from the fact that each time I meet someone I haven’t seen since Zach’s death, the whole experience wells up inside me, and I am slammed with the grief, the suffocating panic, the stabbing pain.  It is just easier to be alone with those few people who have seen the worst of us at our worst.  Not only that, but I think the whole “be still and know I am God” command kind of demands an isolation of sorts.  Being still and alone or simply quiet with the safe people isn’t such a bad thing – no matter what Peter MD says about it.  He hasn’t been in our shoes, and I hope he never is.

On Sunday, it was really bad.  Flashback after flashback bombarded my mind and the tears came again and again.  That night is something we will all carry for the rest of our lives only to drop away and disappear when we too, like Zach, are face to face with our Redeemer.  It’s horrific.  Memories no one should be forced to carry.  And yet, God allowed that.  

Sunday was bad.  I felt hopeless and helpless and crushed again, and Monday was the same.  I’ve never experienced grief like this – where the “gone” person was with me every day and night for 13 years.  He’s missed by everyone, but they didn’t have him day in and day out so the hole in them is different than the one in us.  There’s just an empty space all the time, a hole, a very deep one.    Lately, I’ve been hit with the deaths of several other people, and I wonder about and pray for the ones who’ve lost the everyday of the person who’s gone.  Their grief is a place that most of us don’t know yet.  Most of us haven’t lost a child or a spouse.  That every single day hole is deep.

And then there’s God and what He’s doing in the midst of all this.  Of course there are the never ending butterflies – every single day- every single one.  As for church, we’ve been doing “home” church, listening to Bible lessons crowded around our kitchen table.  And, I read my Bible almost every day to stay on track with my “through the Bible chronologically” in a year plan.  So part of my reading Sunday morning was Psalm 34.  Reading through it, I stopped.  Part of that Psalm has been quoted to me many times since Zach died, but I had never looked it up or knew exactly what the context was:

¹⁷ The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them;
   he delivers them from all their troubles.
¹⁸ The LORD is close to the brokenhearted
   and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

I read that in my Bible Sunday morning.  Later, as we listened to our Sunday morning lesson, again, there was Psalm 34, specifically those same verses.  The Lord is close to me with my broken heart and crushed spirit.  Okay so a nice coincidence.  That Psalm 34.

Monday night I soaked in my new tub.  So down and depressed and just sad.  Trying to pick myself up and feed my mind with something good, I thumbed to my place in the Marsha gift of Confessions of a Grieving Christian.  Have you guessed yet that again that message – that Psalm 34 message about God being close to me and my broken heart and crushed spirit was right there in the chapter of that book.  Right there again!  Three times in two days.  I guess I should pay attention when God speaks.

 What I am learning in all this grief and sadness and pain is that it is alright to feel it.  How many times do we read about the tearing of clothes, the smearing of ashes, the gnashing of teeth over tragedy in the scriptures?  Lots in the Old Testament for sure.  I don’t have to feel good, or better, or even okay.  I just need to know that God is there to save me – each day, every day, especially in this.  It’s the isolation that is teaching me who He is.  Peter MD may not like that isolation address, but isolation is where I am until God moves me.  And He will have to move me.  I can’t do it.  I can’t forgive myself.  But He can teach me forgiveness.  I can’t stop asking why.  But He can change the question.  I can’t stop the hole.  He can fill it.

So, no matter how many times those people out there tell me what they think is best for me, only He knows.  And I am very comfortable although miserable with my broken heart because He is close to me.  He knows.  And He will save me.

 

I can’t do it.

He is close to the brokenhearted.  He will save the ones who are crushed in spirit.  And He will keep reminding me with those butterflies that Zach is exactly right where God wants him to be, and that over and over reminder will slowly knit together this broken heart and heal this crushed spirit.  He can do it.

Butterfly Chronciles Volume 34: Death and Taxes

Today I did our taxes.  In the process, I had to answer questions about my kids and answer about Zach that he died in 2011 and how many months had he lived with us?  We render unto Caesar.  We render unto God.

I see the world through a different pair of eyes.  I'm glad.  I just don't like how I got this new pair of glasses.  Sharing a birthday dinner with friends last night, we spoke about survival.  And those who don't.  I don't know why I get up each day, put on make-up, dress, and continue to put one step in front of the other.  Unless all those self destructive years of doing everything but honoring God and finally turning back around made me strong for this journey.  Choices?  It doesn't feel like a choice this life I'm living, but just the right thing to do - to keep going.  I think about that song that says "every step is one step closer to you"...for me that's one step closer to Zach.

I'm southern, completely.  Every time we Southerners come face to face with another Southerner, "How are you?" is the phrase we've said since we were born.  And "fine" is the answer.  Always "fine" or some kindred derivative.  I'm working on a new answer.  Although the asker never knows it, every time I'm asked, "How are you?", my mind immediately thinks of Zach, and how fine I am not. It's not fine or okay or good.  Survivable.  Different.  Anything but "fine."  So, I'm practicing other answers that are true.  "So blessed.  Eternally secure.  Graced out.  Thankful.  Saved.  Growing in Christ."  So many answers that are just so much truer than "fine."

I want to be a planter of seeds.  Or a waterer of seeds already planted.  I don't want to be "fine," and I never knew that before.  "Fine" is not enough.  Not nearly enough.  Through it all, I'm everything but fine, and that's just fine with me.

I don't understand it.  I don't know why.  Maybe soon I won't ask that question anymore.  I'm praying for that day.  What I do know is that the presence of God puts the energy and motion into every single step I'm able to take.  I won't ever be fine again.  I don't ever want to be fine again.  But I will keep taking one step after another - every day closer to Zach.  Life is fatal.  Plant seeds.  Don't just be "fine."  It's just not enough.

And every day, it's not just fine that I am given butterfly after butterfly.  It's so much more than just fine, and that's just fine with me.