Butterfly Chronicles Volume 46: Sad Week - Soul Weak

Dear Zachery,

Daddy, Madison, and I have been reading a series by Gary Paulsen about a young boy names Francis Tuckett.  It's all about his adventures traveling west on the Oregon Trail.  The series begins with Francis being stolen by Indians and ends several books later when he finally reunites with his family.  In reading the final chapters last night, we peeked into the life of Francis's mother and how she, like an angel, floats into Francis's room night after night after his return, just to find the flesh and blood him there, just to make certain he is really home. Standing over him, she strokes his cheek as his breaths heave and ho - a quiet rhythm of sleeping life under her mother fingers.

Like so many things do these days, the stroke of that cheek flooded my vision and I damned those tears so we could walk to the end of Francis's journey.  Heartbroken and thinking about that mother, I wished for a chance to feel your warm life against my palm on your cheek.  The last time I stroked your hair, your shell poised expertly on a bed of satin, your soul already flown to heaven, resting at the throne.  I long for my heart to be resting too, beside you in the presence of the King.

There are days when I'm so overcome by the truth that you are gone, I closet myself and scream into hands pressed against a face streaming tears.   A heart flu I have, and it aches, fevers, exhausts.  Fuzzy thinking, frozen brain unable to organize or recall or remember.  Confused.  Grief - a phantom I can't capture - hissing a fog - clouding sight and senses.

Life looms ahead, a road traveling to a future I can't see, and I want heaven.  I hear life buzzing around me; I shut it out to save my energy for Michael and the girls; I have only barely enough to walk beside them.  Ten months without you; how many years to go?

 Zach, I don't know how God's plan works out this grief, sadness, depression.  But if I don't have faith that He will, this life means nothing.  I hope God can use us someday - to gift His gospel to a dead soul, to stop a child or person or friend from doing what you did, or just to keep walking until He calls us home.

My heart breaks anew every morning and feeds on His mercies - new every morning too.

Zach, I want to stroke your cheek.  I want you to hold my hand.  I want to hear your laughter, your jokes, your wisdom.  I want to see your dog licking a life filled face.  I want to feel your breath on my neck as we hug goodnight.  God is my stairway to joy; I'm just stuck right now.  It's been a week of calling God, God, because I can't pray.  I love you.  The you part of my heart will never heal.  God send your mercies, new every morning.

We're walking toward you day by day, Zach, to fill the hole you've left behind.

I love you my man-child.

Mom

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 45: Onward Christian Soldier

Dear Zach,

A bad and good day blog all combined.  

How I feel today...

Thinking about the retreat for moms who have a child gone to heaven.  I went.  It was too early from your last day with me.  I left early.

Overwhelmed by their truth, I listened to mother after mother say the second year is harder than the first.  I can’t breathe.  Joy.  I need a joy rabbit trail.  Back to the joy of hope and light and God.  Seven months, one year, three years, nine years, their stories still the same of the heart dulled beating ache, pump after pump, pumping.  And so many with stories so much harder than mine.  The fall is a heavy weight to bear alone.  God, deliver.

Grief aches the body, dehydrates, exhausts, wishes for silence.  How does a person explain grief except to say that it wraps like a straight jacket, loosens, snaps back tighter in a spiraling cycle, neverending.  Paralyzing. If the second year is harder, I don’t know how I can walk through that.  So tired.  So sad.  Needing to write it out, running from the keyboard hands, fingers too heavy to lift to the keys.

I can barely pray.  I want to go home.  “This is not where I belong.”

And then there's how I felt days ago...better, finding joy... 

Dear Zach,
Lately, I've wondered if you pray for us from heaven.  Wouldn't that be something - prayers right in the presence of the King of Kings.  It is a comforting thought.  A thought chosen from joy.

I love you.  I miss you. I'm striving for choosing joy in all kinds of ways - from dabbling in expressing joy in art to stepping out of my comfort zone of isolation to venture back into the peopled world - a place where I've chosen the joy of sitting quietly in a corner watching the world go by - trying to listen and enJOY the stage before me.  This small back into people land step is, I hope, to remain small. Every time it exhausts me into tears when it is over - small steps. I don't want to go back to feeling the rush and pulse of a world out of step, running, running, racing toward an ever far away goal of sitting quietly.  God is in the quiet.  To be in the quiet is the street address of communion, an entangling of soul and spirit and Holy Spirit. Quiet.

Taylor is thrust into the brutal reality of a world gone wild - a job, a people without God, a place to flex Bible muscles and stand on the promises of God.  We watch her.  She grows.  I pray His hedge around her.  She misses you and locks her grief in tight where it hides and curls like smoke from under the barred door, seeking to cover and choke her.  She wrestles and learns who she is in You, Lord. Onward Christian soldier.

Madison dreamed about you.  You told her heaven is really cool because you got to meet God; it's a big place where you can swim and play sports, and you can do whatever you want. You are happy in the dream.  She is happy after the dream.  Gunner learns and listens to her "roll-over" and rolls over.  Onward Christian soldier.

Your daddy.  My hero.  I choose the joy of him. The love of my life; my hands still sweat over the him hero making me his princess.   So much weight this man carries with a character grown from that onward Christian soldier marching.  Heart full to brim bursting, I love this man who so loves you, and he has kept us all together - a sinew of unbreakable bond tied gently around us, holding us to his life.  Onward, onward. 

Life pulses by.  So changed.  Unrecognizable. My God knowing this marching of a Christian soldier is wrought with a love and forgiveness beyond our brains' abiltiy to contain it.  And I don't feel forgiven or worthy of forgiveness - and not of anything to do with you, just knowing the me I am and wondering how could He love me the way He must to forgive me.  I want to feel forgiven from born til dead.  I pray for that feeling of knowing His forgiveness gift.  Maybe I will find the security of feeling forgiveness in choosing joy - in choosing Him.

For a long time before you moved home, I asked God to give me a faith like George Mueller.  Is this His way to grow my faith on skinned knees and brokenhearted?  This growing, I do not like, but joy lights twinkle, there for the grabbing, there for the living.  The ache suffocates.  I reach for joy.  Somedays it hides and I'm too weak to seek.

Each day, we march on, Christians soldiers, broken, but seeking joy.

That's how I felt days ago. 

 Today, I don't feel that way today - at all.

Pray for us if God allows, Zach.  Each day is uphill, I guess, on our road home. I need a joy rabbit trail.  I want to go home.  "This is not where I belong."

Mommy