Butterfly Chronicles Volume 56: Root of Bitterness

Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, 

be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, 

tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.

Frame of reference.  We all have one, but what is it?  We waltz, or trudge, or skip, or skid through life absorbing the sights, sounds, best and worst that life has to offer. Upon a metaphorical peg board we hang information, grouping ideas and experiences together to enrich and enlarge our view and understanding of the world around us. Tick tock tick tock the clock twirls the seconds by and our perspectives, perceptions, and preferences mold and morph into new or altered or changed ideas, and we mush and mash this all together and add it to our peg board.

What is your experience?  How do you view life?  Upon what do you base the meaning of your existence?

Unlike most people, from our peg board hangs the suicide of our son.  An experience I am thankful does not hang for most people.

But how do other people on another peg board deal with a suicide?  We've heard things like, "Why are you still sad?"  If you know me (and I mean know the real me and not the "all the world's a stage" with a mask on me), you know it is highly likely that my one and only desire when those words tumble into daylight is to sucker punch the person, kick him when he is down, and then walk away nursing the bruise on my fist with a gritty, pissed smile on my face.

Did I really just write that down?  Yup.  But, the thing is, I know what I believe, and I know why I believe it, and I know those horrendous, angry, bitter, aggressive thoughts aren't who I want to be although I truly could be all that. Choice. Those things aren't what and who God wants me to be.  So much life is being learned on this nightmare ride we're strapped into.  To be saved from the darkness, we have to let go of the desire to punch the crap out of that person who has a peg board filled with daisies and moonbeams, and pimples and shaving rash bumps as the most traumatic islands in their lives.  I should be happy for them, knowing they are ignorant of a suicide kind of pain.

Get rid of the bitterness. Get rid of the wrath. Get rid of the anger, and clamor, and evil speaking.  Get rid of the malice.  A haggard picture these paint.  Let them go.

It is hard to turn toward the light.  It is hard to put on a smile.  It would be so easy just to give up.  But really, what would the point of that be.  I don't want people to ever say, "Well, it was just a matter of time.  We knew she'd be a drunk, or a pill popper, or as wrinkled and shriveled as a prune because bitterness ate her life.  We knew it was just a matter of time."

Nope.  Not for me.  I have to remember that some words shouldn't come to the light.  Some words should be swallowed hard, pushing them down, eating the bile, slamming the lips tight against the dark spew that could so easily come and has, and I'm not gonna hit anyone.  Stop it.  Swallow it.  Silence it.  Marshie said don't be bitter.  Okay, Marshie, I'm wearing my big girl panties and working it out.

Just to keep it in writing - not a day has gone by.  Not one single day has gone by without butterflies.  Not a single day.

 

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 55: Zach's Testimony

For God so loved the world and me and you, that he gave 

His uniquely born son and whoever believes on Him will not perish but have eternal life.

Rainy, misty, cloudy day.  Weekend nights spilling into morning before sleep.  I'm so tired.  It has been a day of just sad.

How do I explain how I miss my child?

But God knows and knew what I needed today.  In searching for a document on my computer, I came across this - which I had looked for before, but couldn't find.  God found it for me. 

Testimony of Zachery Sinclair
January 15, 2009

        I learned about Salvation at Berachah church.  When I was saved, I was about 5-6 years old.    At the age of 9, I was baptized by Pastor David Dunn at Grace Bible Church of Houston.  Pastor Dunn made it very clear to me that being baptized did not make me saved.  It just showed that I had accepted Jesus as my Savior.

       Because I am a sinner, I need a Savior.  Sin ruins our relationship with God.  To be saved, I had to understand that I was a sinner and believe in Jesus Christ because He died on the cross to take away my sins.  Salvation comes from faith alone in Christ alone, which means I have to do things God’s way and can’t do things my way.  I can’t earn my salvation by works, but only by believing in Jesus Christ.

 

Zach wrote this for his Sunday school teacher, Ike Spiker.  Why? Because Ike wanted to make sure the kids understood salvation, what it meant, how to get it, and the results.

Zach was almost 10 when he wrote this.

Thank you, God for this, today.

Butterfly Chroncles Volume 54: The Map

 God made a map to heaven, John 3:16.

Overcome with memories so thick and warm, I felt them and slumped face down to the floor, tears and snot tangling curls.  Our baby doesn't live here anymore.

He came on a night when all the natural birth labor and delivery rooms were full.  What was left - a c-section room - ill equipped for a natural birth.  Away was our regular man doctor so ma'am doctor took charge.  Back and forth nurses hurriedly went and came bringing supplies not required or stocked for a c-section delivery room, making the doctor wait and wait again.  Unnerving these travels in and out.

Code blue.  Rapid running, the pallor of worry painting faces in blue scrubs.  Bubum, bubum, bu bum, bu....bum, bu......bum, bu.............bum, heart beat slowing slower. Scrubs scurrying.  The code blue panic button pushed just in time, and the baby heart pounded again in right rhythm.

Then, exit blocked, baby shoulders stuck, vacuum in hand, doctor sucking him into light.  He slid into his outside of me life, and the doctor dropped him.  In slow motion I watched doctor and Michael dive for baby - doctor touchdown catching the blue body, then popping bare butt.

Zach's cry, the unexpected sound, like a tinkling, twittering bird, fragile, with wings floating, not hard or loud or scream, almost quiet, a soft chirp, chirp.

Our miracle baby with the extra short umbilical cord, grown thick, tied in a knot.  "This is how I know there is a God," doc says softly, "because he shouldn't have made it with a cord like this."  Thick cord, daddy sawed clean through.  Our gift.  Our boy blushing pink as blood and oxygen stretched though tiny veins, arms and legs kicking, alive.

We took the tiny wiggling bundle home. We snuggled. In our bed, that pulsing life pressed against my heart, him nursing, hungrily slurp-slurping, dripping white foam smeared on cheeks and chin.  We cuddled.  His sweet boy, sweaty, baby head dreamed on my shoulder.  He grew in a wide green prairie of love. We loved him.  All of us, we loved him.  We love him still.

Crystal clear is the day and memory as if I could touch his 8 month old cheek - him straining forward in stroller - captivated by the baby orangutan at the zoo.  Bottled breast milk perched in his mouth balanced on the branch of my hand.  That was his last day to nurse.  He realized he could watch life while eating instead of burying his head in the twilight of my chest.  He never went back though I tried.  A sad day, him already growing away from me.  So blessed I was to be called mommy through diapers and solid food and Hot Wheels and Thomas Tank trains and tracks, and dump trucks, and monster trucks and Legos, and he grew - farther from the babe I burped.

I want another day, year, lifetime. Another smile, another clap of high five, another whiff of boyhood pubescence on his neck as we held each other in hug - only briefly those hugs now - he was growing up, and some days it is hard to think about the long miles of steps until I see him again - all those steps.  Some days one more step feels better if I go backwards.  Some days I don't want to try.  The ache a chasm so dark and wide it swallows. Yet, there are the girls, smiling, hugging, in the right here and now, alive and living their lives, growing into their futures.  A bridge, those girls, God given to Michael and me carrying us over the chasm.

We love our children.  We long for Zach. Love your children.  Hug your children. Breathe them in and watch them grow.  They are a gift from God.  A God of grace who gave me this Zachery son, gave us His son; a God full of grace; He fills the chasm I can't cross alone.  I am thankful for every moment God gave us with Zach.  What gifts, these children. The one gone home and the treasures still here.  These people, these gifts, make me a better person than I would ever have been without them.  Gifts - a family, a mother, a father, a child, children, and the surrounding hedge of family, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins.  Don't ever take family for granted. Especially, don't take God for granted; the giver of all good gifts who calls those who take His son - His family.  Forever, His family.

Be heaven bound, and let God carry you across the chasm to your eternal address.  

John 3:16 is the map.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 52: Free Indeed - Did Jesus die in vain?

 “So if the Son makes you free, 

you will be free indeed."

One Year Tomorrow 

Waiting for this week, this day, I didn't know what to expect.  Not that I hadn't heard from others about their milestones, but I refuse to take on somebody elses' grief responses.  We are all different.  I still don't know what tomorrow holds, but I know who holds me.


Initially, I thought I would do a blog with just pictures of Zachery from birthdays.  Not this year, too hard, too many tears.

Wondering what God is doing in me, I feel strangely calm and at peace.  Tomorrow Zachery Michael Sinclair celebrates his one year birth into eternity and the presence of Almighty God.  All I can think about is how God is changing me because of Zach.  He's answering prayers. He's lifting the guilt - for now - I hope it lasts.  Guilt from past mistakes, guilt from all the things as a mom I did wrong, guilt that I couldn't save my man-child.

God is lifting the guilt and the veil of guilt, and what I see is Him.  Michael says Zach's death has changed us into better people than we were before.  That is Zach's gift to us - HE, Zach, gave us the gift of a test that has made us know our God in ways we never would have.  Strange to think of his death as the gift bringer, but he has given us so much in the last year.  He is our gift in life and in death.

Zach's death is teaching me that being a Christian is really so much more than we, as 21st century Christians, really walk and practice and live.  We say we have faith; then we worry.  We say God will never forsake us or leave us, and then we act like He has.  We say we study and worship and praise, and then we gripe and complain and moan about how that darn preacher goes over his allotted time every Sunday - as if we arrogant Christians can put a time clock on our Holy God breather of the Universe into existence.  Like we control God's messages to us.  Shouldn't we be BEGGING for more?  Truly begging for more Jesus.  More God. More Bible.  More of His glory in our lives.  Just MORE!  Now, maybe I'm only talking to me.  Maybe this resonates with you too. Either way, I know I'm tired of making God so small and me so big. I WANT MORE GOD.

When He says cast your cares on Me, he means it.  So why is it so hard for me to get out of His way?  I live a life where God is convenient, and I'm not doing it anymore.  If I am anxious for anything, Jesus died in vain.  If I can't trust God with the every hair on my children's heads, Jesus died in vain.  If I can't celebrate the soul flight Zachery took to the very throne of grace, then Jesus died in vain.

I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and the finished and complete work of His death on the cross  I believe in His burial, and His resurrection.  I believe that nothing, neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Zach is free and will never be separated!  I to am free.

So why don't I live free?  Why am I bound by the chains of the fall - or did Jesus die in vain? Today, I am strong.  Perhaps it is a channeling of anger, stubbornness, or denial about what tomorrow is, but in any case, I don't want my God, my Jesus, my Savior to have died in vain.  I want to live looking up to the God who makes something out of nothing, who knit me in the womb, who loved me so much even when I was unlovable, that His son hung from nails on cross, slowly suffocating and drenched in every sin ever committed - for ME and for YOU.  I don't want my Jesus to have died in vain with me living like He's not big enough to carry me - through this - through all things.

I want to live and proclaim and rejoice at the fact that God is God, and I am not.  Free.  He has set me free.  Zach is free.  I can live free in Him and His grace.  And if I don't live like I am free, how can I truly believe that Zach is free.  Today, I'm strong and sure and thankful and overwhelmed by the grace of God.  I know that so many others have it worse.  What right do I have to forget about the blessings God heaps on me day after day and to forget about WHERE Zach is?  I am weak.  I will not always be strong and maybe not tomorrow.  But Zach is safe, Zach is FREE, and I hope God has unfurled the scroll of time so that Zach sees how indeed God works everything together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.


I want to live free though I can't see the scroll but knowing that my God is God alone.

Scatter seeds.   Jesus sets people free - if you've put your faith alone in Christ alone - you are free.  Let's live that way.

Thank you, God, that Zach is free.  Celebrate, Zach.  Celebrate the glory of the Lord!  I love you son, and I love the God who holds you for eternity.  See you in God's right timing, son.  Bask in your Savior!

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 51: In What Will You Wallow?

The LORD is my strength and my shield;

 My heart trusts in Him, and I am helped;

 Therefore my heart exults, 

And with my song I shall thank Him.

This week, our son, Zachery Michael Sinclair, celebrates his most important birthday EVER.  On September 13, 2012, Zachery will have spent one full year in the presence and glory of the Lord, Jesus Christ.  Like the song says, "I can only imagine what it will be like..."

If you pray, I need them, we need them, without ceasing.  The struggle this week especially is whether we will wallow in the joy of the Lord or wallow in the pain of the fall.  I would tell Satan to go to hell, but that is kind of redundant, don't you think?  I want my enemy to get thee back, so I can wallow in and be covered in and be stained by the joy that is only found in the Lord. 

God, hear our prayers. 

We are thankful that You alone hold the universe in Your hands, and You are in the business of simply speaking and bringing something out of nothing.  You know every hair that falls from our heads.  You have promised that You will supply all our needs through Your riches in glory.  You have our best in mind at all times for infinity.  You answer our prayers higher and fuller and wider than we could ever imagine.

Thank you, God, that because he put his faith alone in Christ alone, Zachery is celebrating his first year in eternity wrapped in Your grace and glory.  God, use Zachery in your kingdom to Your glory.  Give us courage and determination and strength as we face another bump along the grief road.  You are our shield, our refuge, our ever present help in trouble.  We are so blessed that You even give us notice.  Walk with us this week, carry us as we cast all our cares at the foot of Your throne.  Through it all, whatever it is, Your grace is sufficient.  Infinitely sufficient.

 

In the saving name of Jesus Christ,

Amen.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 50: Hypocrites, Headstones, and Tattoos

This Sunday, I DID something, and it made me have a really great and happy day full of friends and grace and smiles and art.

On September 13, Zachery Michael Sinclair celebrates his one year anniversary in the presence and glory of the Messiah, Jesus Christ.  On September 13, Zachery Michael Sinclair's family will face that day in ways as yet unknown.  Already, the grief ghoul stuck its ugly mug out of the shadows during our vacation - emotional moments full of missing and an empty chair and a dad without his son and sisters cutting new life waves through the ocean.  Anger, tears, fear, hurting hearts, these seep like the beginnings of an oil well gusher.  Our well cap isn't quite screwed in all the way, our strength pulsing an uneven beat, we walk uncharted paths this one year anniversary upcoming.

To his grave I've travelled once, alone.  Above his dirt pillow sits empty grass, headstone absent.  Can you imagine it?  Shopping for a headstone?  What that means?  Can you fathom the choosing of that child marker for that soul empty hole in the ground?  I used to wonder why people waited for such a long time to do that stone placing.  I don't wonder anymore. In a way it seems silly, marking that empty dirt hole, when the soul has a heaven address.  Zach lives alive, but his no headstone led me to need to DO something.

I'm a hypocrite.  Always have been and always will be...all we like sheep going astray and all that...meaning that so often I have looked through laser lenses honing hot on what my self righteous, proud, unloving heart SEES instead of what I should be trying to KNOW.

I've never hated tattoos - I find that some distract me so far from the wearer that I can't find her in all that ink.  I suppose I would adjust to seeing the person given the time and the building of relationship.  I've just always thought tattoos belonged to those people over there...not to me.  I would feel so judged with a tattoo, and I find that so very sad.  Hypocrite.

Now I wear two - artist Justin painted on Sunday, a permanent marker on me, a symbolic headstone, a reminder of flown Zachery's soul right on my body.  I don't want to be the me I used to be before Zach died - focused on the things ABOUT  people rather than the SEEING of people I am supposed to love.  I don't want to see through me anymore.  I hate the me I used to be, but I haven't quite found the me I need to be.  It's the journey.  I reach for His hand to steady the change He needs in me and His way he needs me to see.

Note to self and readers, advice from a hypocrite trying to change:

Before judging anyone for anything, tattoos or child rearing or gossip or actions or reactions or a child who took his own life or any other infinite number of things, STOP.  If you meet someone with a tattoo or any of  the so many things we so often judge, take a moment or 20, and ask that person to tell you his tattoo story or life story or day story.  Maybe the listening will lead to talking and the talking to relationship and the relationship to gospel giving.  I can't wait for someone to ask me about my inked art, so I can tell the story, the Zach story, and the butterfly gifts from God stories.  And I already know some will judge, and the joy is:  I don't care!
 
I'm a tatted 47 year old girl with high hopes that my Zechariah - God remembers and butterfly tats lead to mustard seed spreading.  
Christ told us and tells us to GO into ALL the world - the worlds we know AND the worlds we don't know.  ALL the world - peoples of every kind, from every life walk, of every color, and those who are rainbow inked, peoples with stories we should share and care and turn into relationships.  I don't want to be the me I used to be.  The tats surely speak that loud speaker loud - I want my life to speak a different me loud.  I want my life to speak CHRIST LOUD.  LOUDLY.  LOUDER.


God wants His story told to every kind of people.  Scatter seeds.  Go into all the world.  Everyone has a story.  Everyone needs a listener.  Everyone needs Jesus.  God is all about relationships.  We should be too. Life simple.  Just Jesus.  ALL the time.

Go.  Now.  Today.  Go into the world, listen, relationship, gospel.  Simple.  And I'm still a hypocrite, but God's not done with me yet.

To my man who stands by me and to all the "Real Wives of Kingwood" who got wild with me, I love you and thank my God for you.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 49: Peter MD, Faith, Lies, and Butterflies

"...after the fire a still small voice."

Grief sucks.  Grief, a man chasing the “horizon – round and round they sped.”  Heart holes bigger, not better.  

Peter MD, “expert” and those cited “experts,” I spout shut-up at all of them.  Grief doesn’t live at your address, suicide isn’t your house number.  Until you walk down my street, don’t tell me what NOT to do.  Isolation, says Peter MD and those “experts,” is unhealthy.  Shut-up.  Isolation is a friend, a cloak of armor guarding others from me as much as it protects me from them.  Does anyone REALLY want to hear the craptastic grief talk?  I wouldn’t, couldn’t.  I couldn’t handle it – someone else’s grief.  No funeral homes or gravesides or hearses for me right now, and never would be too soon.

 

Does any audience really want to hear or know what this is like, and the answer is no.

Peter MD, I said, it’s not like you’d be bar-sitting, sipping an aged scotch listening to the aching, seeping sap of grief crap for free…you do it for money;  you wouldn’t do it for free.  Chuckled, he certainly did, that MD Peter.

So, I told him my lies.  Lies maybe I shouldn’t tell here in these words.  The lies are - that on this street -I’m not telling the truly true truth.  Repeating faith words, I have no faith.

MD shoves back and challenges me– the enemy lies he says.

I shoot back, I don’t want to give up my guilt and grief and pain or give it to God or give in to forgiveness, or even give in to believing I’m forgiven.  All I feel is fault and failure.  And I know this is wrong, but I don’t even care.

Lies.  I’ve told out loud what I believe intellectually, but mine is a dead heart without heart conviction.  I don’t know if Truth is true anymore.

Peter interjection (ho hum I think) – Mr. Peter MD, he goes on and on, it’s not a feeling; Faith is not a feeling.  Faith, he says, is doing it, saying it, singing it, worshiping it, living it – especially in the deepest, darkest, most dangerous doubting.

Maybe so, MD.  But in the hidden places of a black heart, I spit at God.  Why?  Why? Not only about Zach, but why’s about all of us.  Why would You do this to anyone – us?  Guilt for Zach, spitting at God for a father alone now, no guy adventuring, a dad’s eyes sad glassed.  A sister who can’t sit in the quiet, calm life, or the missing Zach blankets her all sticky hot.  A sister who seems sure and fine about Zach’s heaven life, but we wait for a day for that dam to break – the grief gush – will it come or will it not – waiting.  There's so much guilt all piled up on top of all those what-if's and why's and why's and what-if's.

Like a heroin addict, I go back and back for the guilt, the why’s, the doubts, basking in the self absorption of pain, rolling like a dog on death, my pride refusing to bow to Truth.  Lies – the lie that I believe in Zach’s where; Lies that any of that Truth stuff is a comfort or peace or a bandage slowing the grief flow.

MD speaks – That’s faith.  When you keep on moving when it doesn’t make sense, or  when you doubt, or when you don’t even believe that you believe, and you keep moving - that’s faith.  It’s doing those things even when you can’t SEE the Truth.

I’m just hard enough, I say, from the younger life of living mistakes – scarred and dirty and living with a life I regret and mistakes that still burn so many years later - I’m just hard enough and hard headed enough to make it - even depressed.  I so get why people don’t make it though. 

 My toes hang over the failure cliff always wishing the jump.  Some days I know I won’t make it.  Whispers.  That Alpha Omega, the I AM whispers:  selfish.  Others need you to make it so they can make it and they'll make it so you can make it.  Don’t rip the beginning scab that I’ll grow over each of you in My time. No jumping.  Lies.  I don’t believe Him, but I keep writing those verses and reading those verses, finding truth even when I don’t believe it’s true, and I don’t jump.

Grief is full of lies.  Enemy lies.  Heart lies.  Faith lies.  God will have to separate the lies and true Truth and Peter MD says faith means we keep going.

And the God who made me and knit me together in the womb keeps whispering. "Stop fighting a fight that's already been won." Keep going.  Keep going.  Keep going.  True Truth in the middle of all those lies. 

Grief sucks.  It’s hard.  It’s almost a year, and I’m counting the last moments of my son’s life and seeing him in them and missing him so hard I’m broken into uncountable pieces; I'm invisible.

It just SUCKS, and He whispers, a still small voice, and He asks me what I am doing here, and I try to remember the Truth.