Butterfly Chronicles Volume 44: Operation Choose Joy

Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning.

Charlie Clough, author of Bible Framework and one of the most influential Bible teachers I’ve ever had the privilege of listening to, said it is important to go over and over the Bible stories – the histories of Joseph, Moses, Esther, Ruth, Noah, etc.  Why?  Well, when life hits you with a 5 ton bag of crushed granite, you better have something easy to hold onto – and those simple, true Bible stories show the overwhelming, consistent, and grace focused plan of the Almighty God and serve as an impenetrable defense against whatever this life can heave your way.  I guess the message from Charlie - to KISS (keep it simple stupid) plays out in front of my current window on the world – keep it simple, remember Who God is and what He’s done and how faithful and true and real He is.  Simple.

KISS.  Choose joy.  It sounds so simple.  Just focus on being joyful – clench joy by the teeth, wrap arms, legs, whole body around it and hang on tight.  Exactly.  That’s exactly what I need to do, but let me say flexing that “joy” muscle against the ravages of grief is hard.  But…I’m commencing OPERATION CHOOSE JOY, and if it kills me, I’m gonna hang on to joy as tight as I can, dragging behind it from a rope that slams me knees, elbows, chin, over and over to the ground until I’m just bloody with joy.  Scattered, scarred, and scabbed, I’m hanging on tight to joy.

Enter Chuck E. Cheese.  Chuck spoke and sang and even scared some of the birthday partiers, but our nephew Connor, celebrating his 4^th was at his best and most charming.  Determined to hold on tightly to birthday party joy, I wrestled with memories of another blonde boy riding rides, and pumping games with tokens, and watching game tickets munched by the counting machine.  Wow.  The joy muscle weakened as Zach sad came crashing against the rocking boat of new birthday memories.  I hung on tight to that rope of joy as it dragged me raw skinned across the pebbled ground of new and old memories colliding.  Aching muscles, grip slackens, the joy rope slides through fingers; I hold on; I am tired.

What do I want now?  What do I want now that I am in a place in life I never ever could have imagined?  Joy.  I want joy to be a thread through even the heartache and loss and pain and confusion and pounding Chinese water torture dripping grief.  I want people to see me wearing joy even in the midst of a broken heart.  My favorite show is What Not To Wear – and Michael told me NOT to wear grief and to put on some joy.  He’s a smart man.

Pretend it is better – nope, I won’t do that.  But I’ll slather joy juice on the wounds and soothe them with the gift a grace-FULL God pours on us every day.  And I’ll find a way to mix joy with sadness and keep on living and growing new joy and new memories and walk through the life I have left holding hands with Michael.

I’ll make Connor a birthday breakfast of homemade pancakes and live in the moment of sticky hands and syrup drip drops on the table.  I’ll swim among the Maddie and Kyler sharks diving and leaping and thrusting floats and floaters overboard while bubbles and water walls sweep over my head.  I’ll enjoy the temporary goggle tattoos lining my eyes as I retrieve Connor’s torpedoes, and I’ll hand slam the water each time he throws another grenade my way, and I’ll laugh watching him laugh.  I’ll spy Taylor and Jordan across a lazy river and feel warmed by their smiles at each other.  I’ll hold Michael’s hand.

I’ll smile.  I’ll hug.  I’ll pray – God, why?  But then I’ll just sigh and know I’ll never know, and bloodied and bruised, I’ll hang on tightly to that joy rope, flexing my joy muscle. Someday, maybe the joy rope ride won’t take me down such bumpy trails.  Someday, maybe the holding on tightly to joy will strong those joy muscles right up so they will last longer and joy will weigh more than Zach sadness.  Hard heart break days, tears, and sad will come, but I want to mix in some joy to my life's wardrobe.

So, commence OPERATION CHOOSE JOY, count the every single day butterflies, and let the games begin.  In God, I know I’ve already won.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 43: Trust? Not So Much...

Driving Michael to the airport this morning, those tingling shivers danced up and down the back of my neck.  I struggled to force the panic back to its cave.  In an instant, I was transported back to that night, to that phone call, to Michael in Austin, me screaming Zach is dead.  Our son is dead.

I relive that reality over and over. The rushing down, flying down stairs, fumbling the phone, blindly dialing, having to transport the Zach knowledge over a line traveling the 3 hours away in the course of seconds. Only in a tiny part of my imagination can I gather an inkling of what that phone call did to my husband, Zach’s daddy.  In a soundless, midnight catacomb of shock he gained Houston over those midnight driven miles.  He arrived after all was black bagged  and carted away on a gurney, his boy, zipped up in a black bag, and my dad was there to keep me from falling down and my sister was there and my mom took the girls, but I don't know who was when that night.  So much jumbled and foggy and clashing.  Michael didn’t see.  The girls didn’t see. I am thankful for their not seeing, but the seeing keeps seeping into my brain, and I keep seeing.

Like a sharp whiplash jerk, the trauma unexpectedly convulses hurling me brutally back in time to the exact moment – a reliving.  I’ve been told I have to go through “trauma therapy” to teach my brain that what seems to be the right now reality isn’t real but the past – that’s what happens – every moment is again real, really happening, and my brain does what it did that night, shuddering that destruction through every cell – a shock wave – disbelief, a slashing lightening burst of loss, fear, drowning, a screaming-screaming of no to erase it all away.

I’ve been grouchy this week, and I’m usually guilty of not pinning my feelings onto what is the actual cause of the grouchy.  In unexpected places, the grouch spewed this past week.  This morning, dropping Michael off, I came into the knowing of where those grouches were coming from.  Michael – leaving again.  Being gone. Reachable by a thin cord joining us by only ears. Please God, don’t let anything happen.  Please no calls in the deep dark of night, no screaming.  Please.

It is hard to trust a God who watched our son do what he did.  I understand that only the one needing the knowing of God can find Him – he isn’t found or felt in the words of others, but by what we put into ourselves and our minds and our souls and what we eat of the Word, breathe of the Word, live of the Word.  Trust is hard.  And that’s the truth.  And God is not surprised at my no trust.  Why fake it?

I heard of another mother whose son also exited by his own hand in January.  Even with the knowledge of making it through nine months, I have no words to give her.  No comfort.  No understanding.  Nothing.  Nothing can make it better but God’s sweeping away of the shattered pieces in His timing, His way, His gluing it back together into a person who hasn’t been before – He has to do that, and maybe it won’t ever be all okay so what would I say?

Trust is hard.  Should I tell her that?  Should I tell her that I don’t think it will ever be okay and that just has to be okay because there are the others who are still here.  Can I tell her I want to celebrate Zach's life, but how can I when I can't even look at his pictures?  Do I tell her the focus will shift over time when I don't really know that at all?  I don’t feel capable or strong enough to be needed by anyone, but that is not the road God has me climbing – all days uphill.  They do need me, and those needs are the mile markers on the ever stretching life highway.  They do need me, even though I don’t feel worthy of being needed. God, make me worthy. 

So I travel as Michael travels, and we try to follow the footsteps walked before us by Him, steps recorded in the Word, His love letter to each of us, all of us.  Michael and I breathe and walk and are needed by each other and by our girls, and that helps the being needed grow closer to okay.  Scary this job of momhood – now, after Zach.  Trust…an icy rope I can’t quite quit the slipping from, hands burned and scarred and blistered from the sliding.  And I know He knows, and I found so many butterflies today in the chest of kid keepsakes - butterflies crafted years ago by Madison’s hands.  Butterflies.  Trust.  Someday.  He goes ahead, God does, even when I don’t trust and can’t find trust.  Even then.  And He says trust and sends butterflies.  And somedays, I can say hi Zach when they fly by.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 42: Crash Down Splashtown

Trying to make new memories has mixed results.  Last year on July 28, we went to Splashtown.  It was a whole bunch of us - Taylor, Laura, Anna, Landon, Zachery, Josh, Matthew, Caleb, Michael, me, Cheri', Connor.  It was just one of the best days.  Madison and Taylor deserve new memories.  We are trying to make them.

Today, we again went to Splashtown.  This crowd smaller - only me, Madison, Landon, Taylor and Jordan.  Smile - I did - a lot.  But there were moments when out of the corner of my eye, I would catch the passing of a lean boy, braces gleaming, and I would wish with all my heart it was my Zach and it always wasn't.  I didn't know my memories of the last year's trip would be so vibrant and raw and right in the front of my memory stash.
 
More than ever, I wish God would just turn back the clock and give me my smiling boy back.  It hurts so bad and feels so unfair and so impossible I can't breathe - my chest aches.  He's gone.  And how can he be?

I had no idea how much of a slam this would be.  Life's heart beats on; I just can't seem to step into the rhythm.  This is the kind of day when I can't imagine how I will make it until tomorrow.  Butterflies.  Just keep watching butterflies.

I know I wasn't there when You laid the foundations, but I will never understand this.  I just won't.  I look at these pictures and he should've been there today, why couldn't he be there today?  I will never understand.  I just don't want this to be real.  I want my boy back.  Today, the missing overwhelms.  It's too much.  I write through tears that won't stop.  I want him back.  My heart breaks again and again.  I miss you so much Zach.  I missed you so much today.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 42: Lord Haste the Day

Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight and forever my soul will be well.

 I melt through moments.

Life’s tapestry tick tock tick tock tick tock won’t stop.

Reading again ( http://www.biblestudycharts.com/A_Daily_Hymn.html) the story of Horatio Gates Spafford and his hymn “It is Well With My Soul” I was taken with the words of the first verse which I hadn’t really studied before:

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Whatever my lot – You, God, have taught me to say, “It is well with my soul.”

Horatio should’ve been named Job 2.  I finally understood that ole Horatio may not have, like Job did not, FEEL well in his soul, but “it is well with my soul” is what God wants us to say, has taught us to say. 

Reading each of Horatio’s verses, I realized not once does he say his soul is well with the tragedies which devastated his life.  He was taught to say it is well when sorrows like sea billows roll, but through the rest of the song, what is well with his soul is Christ and His perfect work on the cross.  Horatio’s song always made me feel like a failure because I can’t really say it is well with my soul about Zach.  Horatio couldn’t either.  We say it is well because God who loves us so much has ultimately made it ALL well with our souls – in and for eternity.

Horatio knew that and says so in the rest of his song:

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

It is well with my soul…

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

It is well with my soul…

And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,
The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;
The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,
Even so, it is well with my soul.

It is well, with my soul,
It is well, with my soul,
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

I wait for my soul to feel better.  It doesn’t.  It only gets different.  Different pains, different knowings, different missings, different panics, different.  It just gets different.

Boy stories, hunting blinds, a brave raccoon, a dead duck.  A story missing a character.  All the world’s a stage and ours is missing a player.

Life all different - meeting in a place where memories and cousins and stories rapturously explode in the now and what will never be a Zach memory.  Constant flip frame of what will be, but for us will not.  I live and swing at the park and smile and swim and laugh.  I hold on to the here and the who is here now. 

I live the laughter and joy of my family and I hold on knowing  I have no more photo moments with my smiling boy or lip curling boy who didn’t want that frame snapped. A missing hider and counter and chaser and laugher in the hide and seek games. Where are those boy noises I sometimes shushed?  Where is the rough hug?  Where is the part of me he took with him?

I wish I could be encouraging and say that time heals.   In 9 months, it doesn’t feel healed – at all.  And I’m tired of hearing I’m better or I look better or I act better.  Climb inside me.  How could you know?  If I said it did – that time heals, I’d lie.   The pain changes and morphs from and into I know not what until I’m showered in the hurt.  I’m swimming in a sea of not knowing what will loose me from the life boat. 

Will it be the visit to Target where I walk past the boy’s section? Will it be the 5 o’clock man shadow growing across the faces of the about to be men I know?  Will it be a series of graduation slide shows spilling life in places Zach will never be?  Is it a lacrosse stick or lacrosse tale or lacrosse sticker on the back of a car?  Is it walking past the tree at soccer where Zach spent his last evening - my mind's eye watching him there, remembering?  Does this grief ever feel healed as I live each tick tock around a bend unsure if a new hurt will unveil, or if I’ve safely escaped a new onslaught?  Never knowing what will joggle my soul to sorrow…wanting to live in the moments of the Michael, Taylor, Madison journeys, and cousin times and cousin and friend stories - I want to live all those alive - just sometimes needing a quiet rest, a time to deposit away the living tick tocks as life's files grow thicker while Zach's remain the same.  Gliding in and out of my soul trying to be well.

Don’t accuse me of loosing my faith.  It wouldn’t be true.  I have been taught to say it is well with my soul even though it is not because in eternity it will be, and I really do believe it, but how do I deal with a chameleon pain that never two moments in a row is the same or what unfurls to unleash it is not the same?  Is it okay to just be overcome and not try to fight back on every front because I don’t have enough arrows in my quiver to wound this enemy?  It is really only well with my soul because I know the Lord – not because it feels that way.

Is this the burden I lay at Your holy feet?  Are these the cares I cast on You?  Where is the dotted line on which I sign that guarantees a cease fire in the grief battle?  And if the wounds still open time after time, what skin are you growing on me to thicken, toughen, urge me to courage?

Stand still.  I will deliver, You say.

I will fight for you today, You tell me.

I say, good.  I’m not up to it; my quiver is empty and my soul quivers.

It is well with my soul – I’ve been taught to say, and I believe it.  I just don’t feel it.

Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight and forever my soul will be well.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 41: Hello Zach

Deliver us, O Jehovah.

Dear Zach,

I’ve been stuck, still feel stuck.  Writing is my way of “therapy-ing” through this situation, and I haven’t been able to make any sense with words.  I write and write and write, but can’t seem to write down what I need to get out of my head.

I talked with Nana Pony about it this week.  The split person I am.  Trying to knit myself back together where what I know is real and what is real is what I know, and I just can’t seem to find the right glue or thread or staples or stitches.  As another mother without her child said, “How do I believe the impossible?”  And not only how do I believe it, how do I live with it?

People mean well.  I know they do.  But I don’t live on the same planet with most of them anymore.  I’ve lost a part of me in a way that most people will never experience, and so much of what I know and feel can’t be shared.  I don’t isolate; I am just isolated.

I understand isolation.  I understand why it is necessary.  I like it.  It is easier.  Every day, I have to think about how much each step in a day will take out of me.  Leaving the house and grocery shopping takes 3 out of 10 unless I meet someone I know, and then it takes 7 out of 10, and I have to come home and be alone again.  Strange.  Very.  I’m an actress in a play I didn’t write. I speak and listen and share as if I am the old me, but I don’t even know the me who is talking.  I’m playing dress-up in my own life.

 

So, I plan things.  Carefully.  Like a doctor’s visit.  An hour to Houston, an hour in her office, moments spent trying to answer her questions, tell her about you without actually talking about it, and then receiving her tears, and I’m so sorry’s, and I can’t imagines, and you won’t ever get over it, and then an hour drive home.  A  10 out of 10.  Isolation.   Back to quiet.  Trying to write, to spend some of the grief on paper rather than in tears.

Today, Friday.  Lunch.  A new friend.  It’s all I’m doing, and I’m prepared so the take it out of me number will be low, and there will be me left to share with Madison and Taylor and Michael when I get home.  A new someone who will know me from now instead of from then and now.  Something new.  It is a step.

So much has happened in the near past.  Taylor’s a graduate, employed, has a boyfriend, is heartbroken but moving forward missing you all along the way. She inspires me.  Madison went to camp for a week.  Not once (at least that she would admit) did she get homesick.  She slowly grows up wise beyond her years. Life moves one day at a time.  Madison points out the butterflies – always.

 Madison still doesn’t talk much about you, but Gunner is common ground.  Hunting dog needs to run so we run him. One day I told her, as Gunner sprinted in and out and up and down and around and back again on the greenbelt, that I think you are happy that we are running him.  Zach is happy mom, she said.  Zach is happy we are doing it.  She asked me if Gunner misses you.  No, I said.  Gunner knows Zach is dead.  He came in the room that night and saw and smelled Zach. Gunner knows.  But I don’t think he’s sad.  Zach, I think Gunner knows he will see you again in heaven.  I think God does that for animals, to keep them from being sad. I think a lot of things I never thought before.

Zach, I can’t imagine what it is like for your dad to be without you.  I am a mom; how could I know?  How could I know what it is like to be a father without his son.   I see the pain and all this hurt all around because of you.  I just wish I could take it all on myself and give everyone a rest from it. Give your dad a rest from it.  We all need a rest from it.

Did you know, Zach, that this week you gave a gift to a friend .  You did that, and maybe God had it planned all along that you would gift a mother whose child didn’t die. It was a dead thing on a shelf until God said let it live in the life of another.  A good thing to touch what your fingers had touched and to let it live.  You gave a gift and you aren’t even here.

 Strange thing this life without you, but really you are everywhere - in our house in our minds in our hearts in the fabric of what holds us together as a family – everywhere.

So these are the days and moments and scales that I measure a life on now.  I try to live what is important.  Being home.  Hemming pants.  Making hotdogs.  Holding hands. Listening, talking, being.  I water my butterfly garden and wait for caterpillars and butterflies.  I want to live in the quiet.

I read my Bible.  I pray.  I wait. I wonder why God didn’t take me instead.  I think about what God is doing and why, and I know I will never know, and I hope that someday that will be okay.  Now, it just makes me sad.  Life is made up of moments, Zach.  Some moments scar and change lives forever.  We miss you.   And in all my sorrow, pain, self pity, confusion, questioning, doubting, fear, shame, guilt, and frustration, the butterflies just keep coming, and I say hello, Zach.  Every day.

I love you son.