Butterfly Chronicles Volume 65: Why Do I Forget Satan Trembles?

“…humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

Christmas, holidays, Zach’s birthday, all playing out like a movie I am watching but not a part of.  Satan hisses it’s your fault.  Gripping my heart, the blood filled muscle crushing, oozing between his fingers, snake tongue licking my ear searching for my thoughts and fears, blowing slowly curling black smoke filled with words: shame for your past, shame for your mothering, shame for your self-righteousness, shame for all your mistakes, shame for your faltering faith in a God who wouldn’t save the likes of you. Unworthy, you.  Hissing.  Humid mouth breath filling my brain, suffocating my faith.

“You say you have faith, for you believe that there is one God. Good for you! Even the demons believe this, and they tremble in terror.” 

They tremble in terror of my God who I don’t almost believe in anymore.  They tremble.

“…my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.”

Those licking lies of Satan.  “God could never love you.  You’re broken.  You’ll always be broken.  God could never love you.”

Exploding light crackles, bursting, splits the hissing wet tongue tickle of Satan’s lies, blinds them searing them out of my head.

The light, speaking a tender voice of steel, I love even you, Satan.  I love you because of who I am, not because of who you are or who you aren’t.  I didn’t choose the road for you, Satan. You chose.  I love her.  I love her because of who I am, not because of who she is or who she isn’t.  I want none to perish, but that choice belonged to you, Satan.  That choice belongs to her.

Guess what Satan.  In your hot sweaty lies, you hide the truth about you. You, Satan, are broken too.  You’ll always be broken.  You chose you over God. You can't hide your trembling from Him.

You, Satan, are right.  I am broken.  But I chose THE TRUTH, THE WAY, THE WORD, THE LIFE,  and the God of the Universe, who makes something from nothing, sees me through my Savior – even if I hear your lies louder than HIS love.

I forget my armor.  I forget my power in the Lord.  I am sad and weak and broken.  You, Satan, operate in your own power, from your own lusts, from your own evil heart – and you stand before God naked and broken without the cloak of salvation given to me by Jesus Christ – which unbreaks all my brokenness.  You will forever be broken.  You pursue with vengeance, but vengeance is mine says the Lord.

I hear you.  Sometimes I listen.  Sometimes I believe your lies.  But Satan, even when I fail and fall, fall, fall away from my God, He will never leave me or forsake me, and you, Satan, left and forsook God.

My eternal address is firm and unfailing.  Guess what, Satan, so is yours.

Even when I am down and your hot breath stamps the stink of dead on my mind, you can’t win.  Victory is mine because of Jesus Christ.  Hiss, lie, twist me up, break me.  God forever wins, which means He wins for me – and because He who is in me is greater than you who are in the world, I can’t do one thing to separate myself from Him and His love.  Neither could Zach. 

Get thee back broken Satan.  My God fights for me, and you tremble.

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. 

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 61: You Can't Take it With You

Thanksgiving over.  Climbing steps, returning to winter rest the attic dwellers - chairs, tables, to sleep til Christmas.  Topping that last attic step, eyes skipping over Zach named boxes stacked, a life, all packed away in brown cardboard. 

The last time I stroked Zach's hair, he coffin slumbered on white satin.  Dead. Cold.  Stroke those silky kid heads, and feel the life under your hand.

Commit to memory the feel of warm hands in yours.  Skip, smell the flowers, the spring, the frost of the season, and store the child eyes filled with wonder and awe tight in your brain - lock 'em up those memories.
All that stuff that covers shelvesfloorswallscabinetsatticsclosets and fills boxes, doesn't breathe, doesn't have a beating heart.  As dead as Zach's earthly tent in that coffin bed. 

Trust me when I say that if you lose a child, you will never ever ever ever feel like you had enough time with him.

Learn from the child faith your children have in a God so big Zach will never know all of Him.

Really, that Jesus stuff, that's what matters.  All the rest of the stuff...someday it'll be boxed up, your life, my life, stuck up in somebody's attic.  'Cause just like Zach, we can't take it with us.  Jesus took Zach.  My arms feel so empty.  I'm gonna go hug my girls and husband and feel them warm and hearts beating and alive. Live the stuff that matters.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 60: Wimpy Christian

All those grief books, stacked up, not speaking how I feel, telling me blessing comes, me miles away from destination joy.

Heroes they are; I am not.

Abraham: an alter left empty at my hands.

Noah: me laughing in disbelief.

Joseph: my plotting revenge, planning destruction.

Shadrach, Meschach, Abednego: a fear gripped heart - mine, facing fire.

Daniel: these ears roared to frantic panic.


A recanter of  faith - me - to escape bonds of a burning stake.

Do you ever doubt as strong as their faith: those Abrahams, Noahs, Josephs, Furnace Facers, Daniels?

It is easy for me to forget Jesus, cross splayed and the cost to those who died for faith. Filled with doubt,   I forget, my faith floats away on the wind.

Since Zach died, eternity beckons.  Calling me.  I doubt.  I forget. Is it real, true, this grace story?

To live is Christ; to die is gain - that's what He says, Jesus.  That shot rang out; Zach fell into the arms of his savior. Some days belief wanes. God, forgive me for missing him so much that it is hard to believe You. Does your faith quiver, waver, fail, ever?

Eternity beckons.  Live Christ.  I am a wimpy Christian. I doubt.


I'm waiting for the blessing. God deliver.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 59: This Doesn't Feel Like Love

For the second time, I dreamed about Zach - a vivid, filled with real warm bodies kind of dream.  Crawling out of it at 5:00 am, I rushed downstairs to write it all down so I wouldn't forget - those precious dream moments with my son.  He hugged me hard.  I said, "I love you."  He said,  "I love you too."

Then he said with so much love I could taste it, "You' ll get here, it'll just be harder."  He meant heaven, and I knew that.  "It'll just be harder."

I'm a wuss.  He's right.  It's harder.  I don't want to be a light.  I don't want to be a witness.  I don't even want to leave my house.

Then, Zach's voice floats, painted in happiness; I feel him and see him saying, "You'll get here.  It'll just be harder."

Isn't that the best description of this life for all of us.  It'll be harder.  For all of us still in "The Fall,"  it'll be harder.


God, this is too hard.  This doesn't feel like love.

Zach said, "You'll get here.  It'll just be harder."

I love you, son.