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.