Butterfly Chronicles - Volume 90: What if?

It's been 1,166 days. 

I WANT CHRIST TO COME NOW.

Wise beyond her years from the way grief sculpts and warps and reorganizes a life, Madison pragmatically stated, "It comes in waves."

Like saying God is love and He could be contained within the four square walls of that word, Madison's is a hyperbolic understatement.  Waves? It comes in tsunamis.  Hurricane force.  The perfect storm.

We face new family dynamics daily.  We struggle emotionally, physically, and mentally with the grief.  It takes a toll which has made us all different.

Fantasies about what Zach's life would be like now - I imagine.  I see him sometimes - in the face of a blonde boy toddler.  In the flip of a fishing rod, line sailing over pond, boy hope reeling, innocent anticipation for the bite, the fish.

I wonder: when did Zach get so unhappy, and why didn't we know? Oh my God in heaven, whywhywhywhywhywhywhywhy.  The answer is silence.  What that silence means to me? God is reminding me He is God; I am not God.  You are not God, Beth Sinclair.  He reminds me of His love letter and the words he says in His Isaiah book:

"Good people pass away; the Godly often die before their time. But no one seems to care or wonder why. No one seems to understand that God is protecting them from the evil to come."

God, I care.  I wonder.  You send butterflies.  You warp and mold and razor blade skin me alive changing me into someone I don't know.  My family - those within our four walls - we are islands, alone, lonely in a grief no one can understand unless they've survived it.  It's lonely.  When I am weak, and I am so weak, HE is strong.  Have you ever been so alone in a situation where the ONLY one you can call on is God?  We're more than 3 years in and still trying to learn how to talk about the suicide. The elephant in the room trumpets, and we shove in earplugs.

The most frustrating feeling that has grown in me since Zach's suicide is the finiteness of our Christian trust in God.  Christians, including me, moan and cry and wail and worry and shake their fists over sin.

Our words focus on sin...ON SIN. We waste time debating modesty, politics, abortion, the death penalty, Isis, the economy, who's right, who's wrong, etc.

Why aren't we moaning and crying and wailing IN JOY over the ANSWER TO SIN?  With all the worry and fret and disaster and evil that filters through our conversations as we discuss the world around us, WHAT UNBELIEVER WOULD WANT TO JOIN THE GOD CLUB?  Do we speak with the mind of Christ?  I'm disgustingly guilty of NOT.  I decide today to change.

What if in answer to every sin I see out there, and in me, I were to rejoice AND SPEAK ALOUD that Christ has overcome rather than being distracted from Christ's face BY the sin?  What if I refused to EVER discuss the sin, but ONLY discussed how sin isn't the issue?  What if I told everyone around me that God loves them no matter what?  What if I could stand patiently in the 20 item lane behind a basket so full it is taller than me...what if I took that time God was giving to tell that basket pusher about Christ rather than being pissed that someone might be wasting my time?

What if wherever I found myself, no matter what, I SPOKE JESUS CHRIST?!?!?

What if in answer to President Obama and all those politicians and political decisions being made which don't honor the Lord...what if, instead of complaining and acting shocked by them, I made it my purpose to rejoice and SPEAK ALOUD that GOD ALONE seats and unseats rulers and that Obama and all those others can't do one thing that doesn't march by God for HIS approval.  What if I SPOKE ALOUD in AWE at how God is using our government for HIS PURPOSES?  What if I spoke about how great God is instead of how bad they are?!?!?  WHAT IF I GAVE THANKS FOR HIS PLAN AND BLINDLY TRUSTED WITHOUT FEAR THAT HE TRULY WORKS ALL THINGS TOGETHER FOR GOOD AND FOR HIS GLORY!?!?!?  What if?!?!!?

I feel our Christian culture in America has become so spoiled that we mistake moaning and whining and worrying and complaining for thanksgiving.  Oh, I want to spend EVERY SINGLE SECOND singing the praises of my God in every situation.

What if in EVERY WAY ON EVERY DAY I pulled every thought into captivity for Christ...what if?!?!  What if I stopped being afraid?  What if the ONLY WORDS OUT OF MY MOUTH WERE A REPEAT OF GOD'S LOVE LETTER TO ME??  What if?

Love is patient.  Love is kind.  Fear not.  God is love.  Be anxious for nothing.  Love your neighbor. Do all things as unto the Lord.  WHO WOULD I BE THEN?  Am I brave enough to find out?  He is my Way.  My Truth. My Light.  He is the Word.  He is God. Do I speak and live that way? What if...what if I kept my eyes on HIS FACE AND CHOSE TO SEE EVERYTHING THROUGH HIS EYES? What if?

God, make me strong enough and courageous enough to blindly accept whatever you have for me.

 What if?

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 89: Am I Alone? Life is Too Loud...

God, quiet this too loud life with your still small voice, the gentle whisper of Your infinite being and presence and love and power.

Am I alone - reverberating a discordant BONG----BONG----BONG----GONG echoing in bones and brain.  Too loud.  Am I alone?

Grief turned up the bass and volume of my life's stereo.  Life is too loud, hits too hard, seizes reason, rattles and rolls me.  Grief steals patience, hates excuses, molds guilt, despises injustice, and screams. Too loud. Pain.

Am I alone?















An island?  Is this the "About Us" link for the Dead Kid Club Dead Marriage Club Dead Relationship Club Dead Fallen World Club?

Is this too loud life the new-normal, grief life?  Or is this just life?

Am I alone?

Is this life too loud what's left for me to live?

Satan labored and birthed grief, formed from the egg and sperm of His "I wills."  Evil.  Satan metamorphosed in the black hole of his pride from God's perfect creation into abomination.  God didn't make grief. It's ugly. Relentless. The hissing snake.

Am I alone?  

Are you alone?

Do you live this gonging, too loud, living, too fast, too much, too long?

Does The Fall's dead, decaying animal stench of grief and regret and 

guilt hit you sometimes so hard you want to die?

Are we alone?

I don't want to be alone.

I don't want us to be alone.

They keep saying I have to talk about it. NONONONONONONONONONONO.  

Who will understand my grief truth, and how could I talk about it to the ones I love whose eyes are bloodshot and purple shadowed in their own fight of the stink?  Are their lives too loud? 

Savagely cloak them, us, me in Your grace, Jesus.

Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. Everything.

Whisper us free with your still small voice.

The stench is evil. 

Are we alone?  

Do you talk about it?

Do you fight it until you're empty and numb and so heavy you can't get up?

Jesus, you know the words we need to say. 

Hear them for us; pour them out; wipe us white as snow.

I give up. Take me up.

Come, soon.  Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

This isn't how it's supposed to be. Life and grief are too loud.  

With Your still, small, whisper, turn down the stereo.

We are not alone.

Thank you for butterflies.

Thank you for butterflies.

Thank you for butterflies.

 We are not alone, Jesus.

We are not alone.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 88: I'm Wondering How Long is this Gonna Last?

The sneaking up of this stabbing grief brings waves of devastation.  It hits like a perfect storm that no radar can predict. I don't write because I don't want to tell the truth.  

Never has there been a day without butterflies.  Not one.  But the suck of this grief still vacuums the air out of my lungs and like a movie in slow motion I watch it chip away the marble of who we used to be and morph us into people we don't know. Normal is elusive, a fantasy, a joke.  I am not full but hope-less and less.  Zach is everywhere and nowhere.  I give up every day.  The shrink says we are living a fake life - not dealing with it.  Uhhh, has your kid killed himself?  So easy for him to say words he hasn't lived.

I'm wondering how long is this gonna last?  I know The Fight has already been won, or I'd be dead.  I'm not who I used to be.  I am redeemed.  But I don't know who I am.  "I'm a creep.  I'm a weirdo. What the hell am I doing here? I don't belong here."

Zach,

The other night at work, Jordan met a man. The man wanted to die. We know how he feels, Zach.  We've said it out loud - your family has. We get it. It would be so much easier, but we keep living.

Voices seducing this man to suicide had delivered him to Jordan's ambulance, and they rode a long road to a psych ward.  Jordan listened.  Heart breaking were this man's broken heart stories. Jordan listened. They rode. Jordan listened.

Jordan talked.  Jordan told how your 13 year, life story ended, Zach.  Suicide.  Dead.  He told Taylor's now story.  And our now story.  He told the man the truth.  He told the man the after suicide stories.  

He told that man, if there is anyone here that you love, don't do it.  I know how it hurts people. I've seen what it does.  If you love anyone, don't do it.

Maybe because he told your story, Zach, maybe Jordan saved that man. God's mustard seeds floated on the in and out breaths of Jordan's words. Planting and listening and riding with that heartbroken man, God was there and poured out of Jordan. God. That man saw Jordan's Jesus and can seek and find grace and follow the seeds to the only name - Jesus Christ - who can finally and forever save him - no matter how his life story here ends after that.  God goes before and in and during and after and all around - everywhere.  He spoke through Jordan - and the man has a choice and makes a choice, and another, and hopefully lives for another and another because he loves someone, anyone, Jesus.

Life is hard. Hope is less.  I'm wondering how long is this gonna last?

Zach, I wish I had been given the chance to say don't do it. I wish I had spoken Jordan's words - if you love anyone, don't do it.  You do love us. My beautiful boy, you didn't know the after suicide stories.

I see your last face; I stroke your dead cheek and your lifeless hair, willing your eyes to open, running through an empty, dark, nowhere infinity to find the exit from the nightmare, and my heart breaks again. There's no exit door, Zach. We live the after stories.  I'm wondering how long is this gonna last?

Psychs and counselors surround my wagon with burning arrows screaming 

TALKABOUTITTALKABOUTITTALKABOUTIT. 

Fear inhales me and spits me backwards in time to that night.  I will disappear if I talk about.  It will swallow me up. It will kill me.  Talking about it makes it real.  I can wall it out.  I can seal the lid.  I can runandrunandrun.  My imagination won't even peek around that corner.  There's only panic. I'm exploding.  I'm wondering how long is this gonna last???

It's for your girls, your husband, your life, they say.  I'm drowning; it's lead weights.  Bar the door.  Run. 

Jordan is right.  If you love anyone, don't do it - suicide - don't do it.  

Zach, it's unbearable.  The never knowing when it's gonna hit me.  And I can't breathe.  I'm wondering how long is this gonna last? How do I ever stop the overwhelming pain of missing of you?  It doesn't get better.

God, shake off these heavy chains, wipe away every stain, unshackle me from my failures and the ghosts from my past.  I give up.  Again. Set me free. Like a butterfly.

http://youtu.be/VzGAYNKDyIU I Am Redeemed

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 88: Are You Free to Fly?

"Sweet freedom whispered in 
my ear you're a butterfly, 
and butterflies are free to fly.

Fly away, high away, bye bye."

God gives them wings. They're not flying solo.

If only I could tell you every butterfly story...

I hugged my daughter desperately hard last night.  She's off to Florida for spring break.  Yeah.  I know all about Florida and spring break.  I went to Florida during spring break for a wedding. A girl jumped into our car and flashed her naked boobs at us. Yeah. Florida for spring break. We could've said no. Or, we can believe in the ways we've trained her up and trust God for His best for her. Zach's dead. Control freaking didn't save his life. What would you do?  I'm like an Olympics ping pong ball ricocheting back and forth over the net between panic and peace. He's either big enough or He's not.  Right?

So much bad news lately - back and forth over that panic-peace net.  Pain. Suffering. Wailing. Dementia, death, divorce, alcoholism, my own pathetic, pitiful failings, and more moms joining the suicide club.  From every freakin' direction.  All the time. I'm wearing a deep trail on both sides of that net.

Since Zach died, this has been the theme song of our lives. I'm talking about an avalanche of individual, REAL, in this very moment, people kind of suffering - up close and in my face, personal kind of suffering. The kind that humps my shoulders and makes me want to give up. The kind I can't fix. And don't we want to? Don't we want to fix the fall?

I know I don't have any right to answers or to even ask questions, but why?  Why did Peter M.D. tell me about the other mom who joined the club - a year ago - her son "suicided."  She came to see Peter the day before he saw me this week.  Why now?  Why this week? Peter told her about me. With her permission, he gave me her name.  He gave me her number. He said maybe our club could have coffee. He knows our club is small. Is God bringing this she to me or me to this she?  What is The Holy Weaver weaving?

News about my kids' piano teacher hit us this week too: diabetes, coma, ventilator, toes amputated.  A beautiful, sweet Christian - and her family gets this dance card. God allowed the orchestration of this grand ball for them to waltz in the company of Job. My God. My Savior. My Jesus. Gives permission.  And I am supposed to submit to this will that I don't understand while I fight the gurgles of panic, bitterness, bile, burning burps from my throat.  The only Pepto Bismal balm lives in His word.  I gulp it in great, gasping heaves.

Why is the news overwhelmingly ugly and sad?  I am not strong enough or brave enough or smart enough or Christian enough or faith-filled enough to carry these burdens, this flow of despair.  I am a GREATGREATGREAT sinner - negative, bitchy, doubting, judgmental, stubborn, hard headed and hard hearted, outspoken, filter-less.  I make excuses. I get so much of it so wrong.

     I'm saved.

Somehow He works all these things - the stuff of the fall, our failings, tragedy, and despair - somehow He works all these together for HIS glory.  His 2 plus 2 doesn't equal 4, but ALWAYS equals infinitely more.

There are brief glimpses of a flying, free freedom in the midst of the darkest dark.  Letting go.  Casting it all, each disaster, hurt, pain, one by one written, recorded on butterfly paper and buried in a box - the prayers. Not reliving them over and over by praying and taking them back and praying and taking them back, but giving them all at once to Him.  Relinquishing the cares to HIM - the problems cast on The Problem Solver. He doesn't need to be told twice. I write them down. I drop them in the box.  I'm soaring free in a moment of absolute faith, full of that supernatural peace which passes understanding. Fleeting. My faith muscles quiver and fail; I crash land.

But for a moment, a soul freedom sighs as I place the box top over the needs and prayers.  The freedom is in a kind of unadulterated innocence, a simple, child-like trusting that once I cast it, I need not take it back. He makes it easy. "Cast your cares." It's so easy - it's easy to forget how easy it is.  I cast those cares then act The Fisherman reeling them all back in to DO the doing rather than trusting in His doing of what needs to be done.

God pours this freedom on us telling us to go boldly to the throne of grace. Boldly:
* not hesitating or fearful in the face of actual or possible danger or rebuff; 
courageous and daring:
* not hesitating to break the rules of propriety; forward; impudent: 
*necessitating courage and daring; challenging: 
*beyond the usual limits of conventional thought or action; imaginative
Boldly!

Go boldly to freedom.  We wash freedom off, turn our backs, hold on tightly to our problems and live faithless - arrogant in the belief that our worry and fretting and doing can do the fixing. God, grow me in stamina to boldly leave what I've left at your throne - with You.  You are the Author and Finisher of our freedom, and You alone are The Fall Fixer.  God call to my mind the bold doing I'm supposed to do.


BELIEVE
      BE strong.
            BE courageous.
                  BE still.
                        BE a caster of cares.
                              BE FREE.
                                   BE JOY - FULL!
                                   

 Without Christ I am nothing.  With Christ I am only something when I give the doing over to Him - when I don't fly solo - when I put on His wings.  I pray you have Jesus.  I pray you find those moments when you've cast the care and are flying free on His wings. I believe in the God who has given Zach wings like eagles.  I long to soar with The Son and my son. We Christians are free to crash or to take full advantage of this life's flying lessons.  Every day with butterflies He reminds me I have His wings, and I am free to fly.  Fly away. High away.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 86: Isn’t It True for You?

 

A mom contacted me recently about her child’s depression and suicidal thoughts. Even though you don’t know her, please lift her, her child, and her family in prayer.  Sadly, this isn't the first mom who has contacted me.  However, this time the experience has produced unexpected results. Who can know the mind of God?

As the mom and I have communicated back and forth, the Lord brings His words continually to my mind.  Vehemently and with passion, His words pounded through my fingers.

Convicted by every promise He has poured on the page, I began to understand the gift of this woman, wrapped up by the Lord, Himself, and delivered to me on my own journey of depression and in my own struggle to keep taking one step and day at a time. 

As the Lord filled the blank lines, His words formed my prayers.  His words tumbled with admonition against guilt, with promises that His plan is always for our ultimate good, with reminders to stand still and let God be God, with the reverberations that our God fights for us, with a direct call against the principalities of darkness to release this family in the name of Jesus Christ.

In my deepest gut, in the full space of my soul, God shook me with the power of His absolute truth.  For this mom and child and family, I KNOW THE POWER OF GOD IS AT WORK.  HE IS FOR HER.  HE IS FOR HER CHILD.  HE IS FOR HER FAMILY.  HE IS WORKING ALL THINGS TOGETHER FOR GOOD BECAUSE THEY LOVE HIM, AND HE WILL BE GLORIFIED IN THE MIDST OF THEIR TEST.

Jolting me like a thunder clap, God’s words slapped me right upside my head with an AHA moment of intense, piercing power.  A gentle voice inside me said, “If you believe all these things are true for her, why can’t you believe they are true for you?”

How does He DO that?  How does God use broken me, who can’t accept His grace, to tell another mother in need about His grace?   How did I tell it with a burning conviction so deep for her that it melted my skin?  I hope someday this other mother realizes how God used her to kick me with His blessing.  If His words are true for her, aren't His words true for me?

God, my God, Your question is branded in my brain, “If you believe all these things are true for her, why can’t you believe they are true for you?”

Today, I do.  Today, I do believe God's words are true for me.  Today, I am swaddled in His arms of grace just like my Zach.

 

Believe on the Lord, Jesus Christ, and He can swaddle you too.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 85: YOU BLESSED ME!

To everyone near and far who updated Facebook profile pictures with butterflies for Zach's birthday, you rocked my world. You thought about Zachery and bombarded me with love. God has woven each of you into the tapestry of His plan for me. You all are an indescribable gift.

1. Imagine what it will be like for us someday, in the blink of an eye: 

• When we all get to heaven,
  What a day of rejoicing that will be!
  When we all see Jesus,
  We’ll sing and shout the victory!

1. 
   
2. Sing the wondrous love of Jesus,
3. Sing His mercy and His grace;
   In the mansions bright and blessed
   He’ll prepare for us a place.
4. While we walk the pilgrim pathway,
   Clouds will overspread the sky;
   But when trav’ling days are over,
   Not a shadow, not a sigh.
5. 
   
6. Let us then be true and faithful,
   Trusting, serving every day;
   Just one glimpse of Him in glory
   Will the toils of life repay.
7. Onward to the prize before us!

Soon His beauty we’ll behold;
Soon the pearly gates will open;
We shall tread the streets of gold.

• When we all get to heaven,
  What a day of rejoicing that will be!
  When we all see Jesus,
  We’ll sing and shout the victory!

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 84: Let the Sunshine In

Thank you, God for giving me words to write and for letting the sunshine in!

This holiday season was the hardest yet.  Somehow, like a potato peeler scraping away one thin layer after another, the numb melted, melts - imperceptibly - catching me off guard - my brain floated amid the twinkling lights and shiny red packaged gifts and hugs and meals and Merry Christmas's and "Silent Nights."


Zach is not here.  No Zach gift tags.

No Zach stocking hanging.

A dull pounding, the question persisted: how will I do this year after year after year after year? Future stretched, stretches.  I closed my eyes. Dark.  Not better.  Different.  I don't want to take any more steps.

Peter MD is my toilet (his words) - he, the dumping ground for the steaming misery piles which fill me up as my well of strength empties.  The grieving body can only take so much.  The tank empties; reserves dissolve in the voices of guilt, despair, what if's, why's, bitterness, self-pity - harder and harder to push away, the soul's fortressed walls pummeled, battered, broken, breached.

December's Peter MD appointment was cancelled to benefit another.  Like the toxins build when the body backs up, so my soul filled with stench.  By the time January rounded the New Year and the Peter MD day came, the rot of depression and grief permeated the air around me to the point I could hardly speak. I made myself sick...the bubbling black a time bomb.  NO ONE need hear hopelessness - so sad to my own self I felt straight jacketed by it - words - to let them out - a black tsunami.  My soul muscles shivered with the ache of barely holding it back.

Even with Peter lifting the toilet lid, readying for the dump, I could barely let it go.  Ugly words splash. If words could draw, their pencil would've sketched Satan.  Stuttering, crying, I denied my faith, God, hope, happiness, prayer, the slow dripping of pain easing the pressure.  I didn't say it all.  I said enough.

As the clocked tocked to "times up," Peter MD, who ( thank you, God for providing him) uttered in his degreed dialect, black and white way, "The Psalms.  The Psalms are full of woe, distress, despair, pain, and praise. A thanks, a thanksgiving.  If you can't pray anything else, give thanks even for one thing."

Cha-ching!  My money's worth ten times ten.

Chinks of light filter into the dark.  A slow trudge up thankfulness hill is bringing the sun back to me. Madison is out of town today, the day after Zach's birthday; I'm still in jammies and slippers at 1:08 pm waltzing through piles of dirty to clean to folded laundry, piles of dishwasher clean dishes to loaded dishwasher dirty dishes, to the thoughts of thanks for messes.

Let God let the sunshine in.  Life is messy.  An earthly body dead is sealed in a box and buried.  No more messes. Life is dust bunnies, fender benders, flu bugs, strewn socks and shoes and school books, and a friend's baby boy riding his toy across a hard wood floor littered with a 1000 crayons. And life is pain and grief.

Those messes we march through represent the lives of those we love.  Thank you, God, for rubber gloves and dish soap and my very own mess makers.  Thank you for holding me and molding me when I am a hopeless mess. Thank you for Peter and his toilet.  Grief sucks, but thank you for letting the sunshine in.

Give thanks to Him; bless His name.  I will give thanks to the LORD with all my heart. Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing. Praise the LORD! Oh give thanks to the LORD, for He is good. Let those who love Thy salvation say continually, "Let God be magnified."

46 seconds of letting the sunshine in:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-4w9gKlR3U

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 83: In the Blink of an Eye

Today is Zachery Michael's 16th birthday and his 861st day in heaven.  In 861 days, God has never failed to send me at least one butterfly to remind me of Zach's eternal address. On the darkest days of which there are many, God sends so many butterflies I almost can't believe it really happens.



We Christian mothers in this awful dead kid club are acutely aware of the importance of putting one's faith alone in Christ alone. Because our hope is in the salvation of the Lord, we know that in the blink of an eye, we will meet Christ face to face and rejoice as we reunite with our children who have gone before us.

As I give thanks for the knowledge that Zachery is at home with the Lord, I ask you to contemplate your own eternity. Do you know Christ? Could you put aside all your preconceived notions, all the bad examples you've ever seen in Christians, all the church hypocrisy you've witnessed, and all your disbelief?  Put it all aside for a moment.

Take a chance on believing that the butterflies for 861 days aren't an accident or coincidence. Make today the day you sincerely seek the truth about Jesus Christ. Call His name. Tell Him you want to know Him and to know who He is.  He's always been calling to you, to the weary, and to the broken. He already knows you by name.  He was there when you were knit in your mother's womb; He loves you with perfect love.  No matter who you are or what you've done or what you've left undone, Jesus Christ is waiting on you to accept His grace gift of salvation, and He will meet you right where you are. Give Him a chance to fill your life with His light.  He may never give us a perfectly smooth road or ride, but His light is available to guide each of us on whatever road we travel.


If you're not sure about which way to go, read His story.  If you don't have a Bible, message me, and I'll find a way to give you one.  It is the greatest true story ever told.




Happy birthday, Zach.  Enjoy day 861.  I love you and will survive the missing of you because I know I'll see you in the blink of an eye.  To God be the Glory.




UPDATE: I haven't been able to write since before Thanksgiving because it would've been so dark. This is NOT the blog I started writing today.  The original was full of misery, sadness, and the weary heaviness and depression I felt all through the holidays.  Before I do a blog, I ask God to give me words when I write, and I only publish when I truly feel in my gut I'm supposed to press "send." Today's blog morphed into the words above over the course of about 3.5 hours, and they surprised me because they are not the words nor the journey I was on in the beginning.  I'm glad God got His message in front of mine!  PTL