Butterfly Chronicles: Volume 3

"A good many people never learn to sing until the 

darkling shadows fall." Streams in the Desert

9 weeks 6 days and Thanksgiving looms.

 Not sure how this is going to play out, but we're catering the day and inviting enough people so that we can disappear unnoticed into the never never land if it gets too difficult on a day I can't begin to even imagine.  And giving thanks?  How can I give thanks when Zach won't be there? And I know I should, should want to like in years past, counting untold blessings abundant.

  God is faithful; I am not.  The butterflies keep coming, and I keep asking for more, again, more and again...until I think He must wonder if I have brain damage...and then I realize He knows that I do, and He will be the only one who can heal it and halt the projector playing the horror movie that sneaks up on me and runs vivid in my head, that night over and over in my head.

A life is over - here.  But I said I believe in the there up there somewhere and desperately long for continued confirmation of the promise of that home eternal for my son.

Right now, I am deeply, utterly, completely lost.  And don't kid yourself by saying I'm courageous or brave or doing so well BECAUSE I AM NOT.  ALL IS NOT WELL WITH MY SOUL.  And all has not been well since the fall and this is NOT how God meant it to be and I'm really pissed off and can't even rally the goody two shoes Christianese that we all use on one another as we pretend all is well. I've been a fake Christian for too long.  One who was afraid of anyone seeing my warts because I'm so good because of Jesus and look at all the things I'm doing for Him, and amen and praise the Lord.  And what's up with people telling me lately they've been afraid to ask for prayer?  Where are we for those people and what have we done to keep them from asking?  Faking it isn't giving the truth in love.

The TRUTH is that God never pretended our souls would be well until eternity.  He tells us to be courageous, anxious for nothing, stand still for His deliverance, fear not, cast your cares on Me, and if he's our refuge and fortress and we need a refuge and fortress and a Savior hanging from nails on a cross, why would we think for one second that all is well?.  God knows how hard we've got it or he wouldn't be giving us all those warnings and admonitions and "how to's" on how  to survive down here. But do we REALLY pay attention?  I mean REALLY REALLY?  And do we REALLY care about each other when we can't even be honest enough to say we NEED prayer because we're all so BROKEN and don't want to admit - even to those who know it and won't show it - that we are ALL broken?  Or maybe it's just me and my dead son that's got me thinking about how we Christians put on a happy face, and I just can't do it anymore.

This horror has revealed and brought together friends who know I'm broken and they've told me their broken stories and they are like another butterfly amongst the others God has sent me.  And we can wear a crooked smile with eyes teared and running and tell the truth about where we are and who we are and where we are trying to get in God and pray for each other in truth.  We are broken, BUT GOD.

Impossible as it seems in the midst of all this revealing of His presence, while I watch His gifted butterfly moments and document them, it is still like they are happening to a different person.  There's a stomach churning realization that I really don't  know God at all or wouldn't I feel something?

Looking down the road of future, I can't yet see a place where I'll be knit together again.  But our girls and our marriage and our family and our friends are light, are hope, are worth the struggled climb back into a world of almost wholeness.  But aren't we all only almost whole...all we Christians still not quite right, still sinful, always trying to find our way back to whole?  Aren't we all?  And for a moment panic subsides and I come out of the haze of grief long enough to know Zach is whole and yet I still want butterflies.  And more, and again, and more because I'm still broken.

I think today on the "grief list" I am angry.  I hate that list.