Butterfly Chronicles Volume 43: Trust? Not So Much...

Driving Michael to the airport this morning, those tingling shivers danced up and down the back of my neck.  I struggled to force the panic back to its cave.  In an instant, I was transported back to that night, to that phone call, to Michael in Austin, me screaming Zach is dead.  Our son is dead.

I relive that reality over and over. The rushing down, flying down stairs, fumbling the phone, blindly dialing, having to transport the Zach knowledge over a line traveling the 3 hours away in the course of seconds. Only in a tiny part of my imagination can I gather an inkling of what that phone call did to my husband, Zach’s daddy.  In a soundless, midnight catacomb of shock he gained Houston over those midnight driven miles.  He arrived after all was black bagged  and carted away on a gurney, his boy, zipped up in a black bag, and my dad was there to keep me from falling down and my sister was there and my mom took the girls, but I don't know who was when that night.  So much jumbled and foggy and clashing.  Michael didn’t see.  The girls didn’t see. I am thankful for their not seeing, but the seeing keeps seeping into my brain, and I keep seeing.

Like a sharp whiplash jerk, the trauma unexpectedly convulses hurling me brutally back in time to the exact moment – a reliving.  I’ve been told I have to go through “trauma therapy” to teach my brain that what seems to be the right now reality isn’t real but the past – that’s what happens – every moment is again real, really happening, and my brain does what it did that night, shuddering that destruction through every cell – a shock wave – disbelief, a slashing lightening burst of loss, fear, drowning, a screaming-screaming of no to erase it all away.

I’ve been grouchy this week, and I’m usually guilty of not pinning my feelings onto what is the actual cause of the grouchy.  In unexpected places, the grouch spewed this past week.  This morning, dropping Michael off, I came into the knowing of where those grouches were coming from.  Michael – leaving again.  Being gone. Reachable by a thin cord joining us by only ears. Please God, don’t let anything happen.  Please no calls in the deep dark of night, no screaming.  Please.

It is hard to trust a God who watched our son do what he did.  I understand that only the one needing the knowing of God can find Him – he isn’t found or felt in the words of others, but by what we put into ourselves and our minds and our souls and what we eat of the Word, breathe of the Word, live of the Word.  Trust is hard.  And that’s the truth.  And God is not surprised at my no trust.  Why fake it?

I heard of another mother whose son also exited by his own hand in January.  Even with the knowledge of making it through nine months, I have no words to give her.  No comfort.  No understanding.  Nothing.  Nothing can make it better but God’s sweeping away of the shattered pieces in His timing, His way, His gluing it back together into a person who hasn’t been before – He has to do that, and maybe it won’t ever be all okay so what would I say?

Trust is hard.  Should I tell her that?  Should I tell her that I don’t think it will ever be okay and that just has to be okay because there are the others who are still here.  Can I tell her I want to celebrate Zach's life, but how can I when I can't even look at his pictures?  Do I tell her the focus will shift over time when I don't really know that at all?  I don’t feel capable or strong enough to be needed by anyone, but that is not the road God has me climbing – all days uphill.  They do need me, and those needs are the mile markers on the ever stretching life highway.  They do need me, even though I don’t feel worthy of being needed. God, make me worthy. 

So I travel as Michael travels, and we try to follow the footsteps walked before us by Him, steps recorded in the Word, His love letter to each of us, all of us.  Michael and I breathe and walk and are needed by each other and by our girls, and that helps the being needed grow closer to okay.  Scary this job of momhood – now, after Zach.  Trust…an icy rope I can’t quite quit the slipping from, hands burned and scarred and blistered from the sliding.  And I know He knows, and I found so many butterflies today in the chest of kid keepsakes - butterflies crafted years ago by Madison’s hands.  Butterflies.  Trust.  Someday.  He goes ahead, God does, even when I don’t trust and can’t find trust.  Even then.  And He says trust and sends butterflies.  And somedays, I can say hi Zach when they fly by.