Butterfly Chronicles Volume 64: Christmas and Butterflies

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given...

Twas the week before Christmas and in my heart deep
old memories stirred tears my eyes could not keep
Zach laid to rest, his second Christmas not here
Face to face with the Lord should bring me good cheer



The evergreen tree stands all naked and sad
While boxes of ornaments unpack and feel glad
Madison strings lights twinkly bright round the trunk
Red balls, blings, and butterflies, tree sways and looks drunk



Thinking past, present, future, fast forward, rewind
Mental memory movies - traipse through the mind
Living past and present at the same ticking time
Meshing then and now, a new mountain to climb

Scrapbook of new memories still scantily clad
Christmas all new for Taylor, Maddy, Mom, and Dad
Christ came at Christmas then hung, bled, and died
Resurrected, He'll save us if we swallow our pride



Merry Christmas is different with Zach's empty place
Not merry but full of God's infinite grace
Moment by moment God proves that He's there
Butterflies, butterflies, every day, everywhere.

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved - just like Zach.
Merry Christmas, son. I can't give you any better gift than you are already living, and I love you to the moon and back and back and back.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 63: Joy?

Joy comes in the morning?

Ever been caught between a rock and a hard place?  How does a person in the “Child Gone to Heaven Club” learn to stop feeling bad about feeling good?  Other mothers do it, make it, maybe not all the time, but don’t they grow to feeling good most of the time?  It seems irresponsible. A shirking of one’s duties, the passing of a baton that feels wrong to release.

Other mothers, some mothers, bubble over with joy.  Do they put down grief, put down that constant throbbing cement filled handbag dragging the ground that hangs on their shoulders?  Isn’t the grief always that heavy, or is this all wrong?  Is the grief ever less than the joy?  How?

It feels so bad to feel good, and so good to feel bad. Why would a mother give that up?  Holding on tightly to pain, heartbreak, depression, and refusing to allow joy to bubble, that’s the road to take, right? That's what defines a mother now, isn't it? This is the new normal life, right? Holding on to feeling bad about feeling good honors Zach, keeps him close, insures the price of guilt is continually paid, doesn’t it?

Marsha and Colleen, doesn’t it?  Your children in heaven with mine and you smile and talk about grace and forgiveness and God gently scrubbing your soul's guilt away.  But feeling bad about feeling good feels better, doesn’t it?  Isn’t this sadness a cloak super glued to the skin to be worn as an itchy, skin tearing reminder of everything that would be made different if given the chance?  Or is it?

Questions march in perfect time across the expanse of a brain.  Is this how it is supposed to be?  Or, is it okay to feel good, to not feel bad about feeling good?  Is it okay to let God have the guilt, to feel good about smiling, to let God erase the bass drum of what if, what if, what if, that never stops beating?

Mothers, some mothers, said the second year is harder.  Is it?  Does it have to be? 

Marsha and Colleen bubble with joy, grief in the background of their smiles, grief behind a joy growing stronger, grief sometimes barely visible if not sometimes invisible.  How did the strength grow to get them there?  They both told me, God.  Eerie, that freedom from grief that's grown in Colleen and that freedom that grows in Marsha.  Believable?  Real?  God.

God, grow me to that place where I don’t feel bad about feeling good, or I'll just stay here where it feels good to feel bad, where bad feels right.   

God, grow me to a place where joy bubbles, where I feel grace and forgiveness. That is how it is supposed to be, isn’t it? 

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 62: The Vision

"My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the 

strength of my heart and my portion forever."

The butterflies come. Today, the vision came again.

The field is alive with a wheat glimmering gold painted across miles and miles under a sky so blue my mind can't hold it all, the wheat a color not rivaled by the sun, a light so overwhelming I slowly grasp it is Him, Christ - a light alive all about and around that waving wheat.  Zach stands in the field, wheat up to his knees, the light in him.  He's so still, smiling, peaceful, content - words too small to tell what I see. 

Although I only see it in my soul, I know joy drips and pours out of Zach silky thick, a joy I could reach out and hold and feel alive in my soul, carressing my cares away like quiet ocean waves gently tickling the sand.  Happiness is a word minutely incomparable to what I can feel Zach feels.  It must be like what the stars felt when God breathed them into existence and why they hang in the sky proclaiming God's glory.

This vision, I know is a glimpse of Zach in heaven.  In motion from brain to tapping keyboard keys, words are inexhaustibly incapable of fully painting this picture for you or for me.  Words fail.  God is everywhere in that shimmering chandelier of light and wheat.  It is new and startling to me each time the vision comes. God makes it new every time - the discovery of Him all around and Zach in the light.  This God all around and in Zach unnerves me - it's too big for me in this flesh body.  It speaks its way into the pieces of my broken heart caressing and washing me clean of grief and filling me with the light, Jesus.

This vision is more real than anything I've lived in this life.  It is not something my mind could imagine.  The song of life mingling with God everywhere and Zach smiling a happiness so big it squeezes me breathless, but not the breathlessness of grief.  It is the breathlessness of love so perfect my soul floats above any pain as if I know what it will feel like when heaven is my home and pain is not something I can remember.

This is the hope that is within - this God who is bigger than words.  He infuses this vision full of hope and joy and in grace He shares with me what it will be like to meet Zach in a place more real than reality.  My heart knows this place is true and grace and perfection.  What a miracle for God to soothe my soul this way.  Awashed in grace, bound up in grace, perfect in His grace.  I love you, Zach.   Your heaven happiness gives me hope.  I've met the God who has made you whole, and I will meet you again someday - the vision becoming real, and we will glory in God's light in His golden field of wheat.