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