The Butterfly Chronicles: Volume 2

It's been 9 weeks and 2 days.

"Remember, O God, that my life is but a breath; my eyes will never see happiness again." Job

Please don't get me wrong...I know Job had it way worse than our family has it.  We've always told our kids that someone always has it worse.  Zach answered this one day with, "Except for the guy who has it the worst".  And Zachery was correct...there is one guy who had it the very worst...Jesus Christ.  And I am trying really hard to believe in Jesus Christ right now.  My heart and head are completely severed and the intellectual part of me knows how God has worked and continues to work, but my heart doesn't really care or even believe it at this point.  I'm split down the middle.

Have I completely lost my faith?  Maybe...but I know God is full of grace and trying to give it back.  This is where the butterflies come in.  I guess Volume 1 of the butterfly stories starts here:
 
http://ihaveaneternaladdress.blogspot.com/2011/10/butterflies.html

I currently live my life praying over and over and over again for God to continually prove to me that He is there and that Zach is okay. Most of the time I'm a Gideon and doubting Thomas.  The doubts and anger are so overwhelming, I'm grouchy, my fuse is too short, I cry and wail hiding in the bathroom, or  nuzzled with my head shoved into my husband's chest.  And frankly, if this tragedy is how God uses me...thank you very much - I DON'T WANT TO BE USED,  I mean, how can blessings come out of this and really - God will have to show me these things in order for me to believe them and even then I know it will be hard.  REALLY hard.  It IS really hard.

So what the hec is up with the butterflies, and the other stuff that keeps popping up?  I need a statistician to unravel the mystery.  If He is actually answering my prayers, which I believe the statistics would show clearly, then why can't I feel it, believe it in my heart, and am I even supposed to yet if everything only happens in God's right timing?  So much pain...and I see it in the bodies and eyes of my husband and our daughters and our family...it hangs and drapes around us like thick smoke, choking us day after day after day.


I'm at "the house," and being there never gets easier so far, and I'm doing laundry, and reading my Ann Voscamp book when she discusses the Luke 18:41 verse where Jesus asks the blind man, "What do you want me to do for you?"  Wow!  Did that get me started!  I poured it all out, venom through pen onto paper.  What do I want you to do for me???  Peace, comfort, healing, freedom from this pain, confidence in who YOU are, knowing beyond certainty that YOU are here and Zach is okay and in heaven, to understand the WHY and to know that all those promises we hang our hats on are REALLY true...THAT's what I want You to do for me...all  this as tears splashed and muddied the page.

I stormed through the house to find my Bible so I could read that Luke verse for myself.  The Bible I found,  I flipped open on my trek to Luke.  Opening to Isaiah, The Book was marked with a face down book marker.  Flipping it over, I read these words:

...whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, 

whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, 

whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent

or praiseworthy--think about such things.

HUH??? (Cause I sure hadn't been doing that even in a small way.)  A small tingle wove its way through my body.  I flipped again and landed in Mark where an old face-up birthday card  from my mom marked the page.  There,on the front of the card, butterflies.  This card is at least five years old and stuck in an old Bible which had been stuck on a shelf for a long time.

Almost every day since Zach's funeral, I've seen at least one butterfly, and on some days as many as thirteen.  On cards, live sightings, gifts from people who know the butterfly story - but they've always arrived when I'm begging, and pleading, and screaming from the depths of pain at God to prove He is there.  I'll tell you more in the next volume...cause I know I write too much for the fast pace we all live where we don't slow down long enough to SEE the butterflies.  Do you "stand still" long enough to notice the messages God sends?  I never did before.

That verse up there, about thinking on good things - that  verse was placed on our pillows at an event we attended last weekend... and that card from my mom in my Bible, I used it as a book mark in my Ann Voscamp book on the trip.  It fell out on the floor when I was in the bunk house alone, crying and praying again for God to reveal Himself again, and one more time, again!  The card landed back side up this time (which I hadn't seen before) and on the back were TWO BUTTERFLIES, so little glimpses of  grace keep popping up through the storm.  

As long as it takes, I'll be chronicling the sightings and how they've come...a butterfly soap mold for a craft at the weekend event, a CD with a butterfly on the cover, a card with butterflies inside and out from someone who only found out 3 days ago about Zachery and who doesn't know anything about the butterflies, a picture gift of a butterfly arriving in the mail from a butterfly photographer who read this blog which someone sent to her randomly, and on and on and on, and you can decide for yourself if the sightings and statistics prove anything.

Maybe I'm doing this to encourage me, maybe I'm doing this to encourage you, but ultimately I'm doing it to find my faith again, and to know that Zach is where my head believes he is.  The hurt of missing him can only be lessened by the God who knows my mind and my heart and who can glue me and my family back together. 

Please, God, send me the butterflies.  And then send them again. And then send them again. And then send me some more.