Butterfly Chronicles Volume 40: Graduation

Her graduation verses:  Proverbs 3:5-6

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him and He will make your paths straight.

 

Taylor’s graduation looms – 24 students on future’s runway fueling for flight.  Homeschooling is different from “regular” school in so many good and bad ways, but graduation is one of the best – God is welcome – exalted – praised openly and unabashedly, a front row seat – no back alleys or whispered prayers for Him here.  Last year, I attended my first one – my first homeschool graduation.  Amazing.  A witness to the power of Jesus Christ from beginning to end.

I am nervous.  At last year’s graduation, I boohoo’ed through the whole thing, and I barely knew any of the kids graduating.  It was just such a testimony to the Lord to watch parents who have lived through homeschooling and who have raised their children moment by moment to His glory finally come to the end of that journey and gently release their children into the sky of future dreams.  A metamorphosis.

Now, it is Taylor’s turn.  She is ready.  My broken heart beating with a passionate pride and resonating prayer for God’s blessing on her life, her steps, her paths, her decisions -all to His glory – that’s what I pray for her.

Last year I cried.  This year…I just hope I can make it through the ceremony without passing out from lack of air uptake in a tear stained snot stuffed up nose.  Prayer.  That’s my only hope.  The overwhelming joy of Taylor’s successes culminating in this ceremony is huge, yet we will all tip toe around another place where Zach’s chair will be empty.  Another day he won’t be there to celebrate in the life of our family.  I know, I know. He’s face to face with the Savior and all that, but my heart still aches and breaks and has a hole.  There’s a jagged, black, deep hole of missing him even though I know where he is.

Fall Apart, the song Taylor chose to play during her ceremony slide show presentation, speaks volumes about what she’s been through this “senior” year – a year growing her faster to old than should’ve been, and the song speaks her walk this year in such a way that I never could.  She chose it - the song that sings her story. I am excitedly looking forward to watching her graduation unfold – tissues, lots of tissues, a must.  Her song; her journey; her butterfly metamorphosis into future flight - thank you God for all the gifts you gave us in her and those you gave to her. 

Trust the Lord, Taylor.  He will make your paths straight.  Fly sissy.  Fly high!

Her song…

Fall Apart

Why in the world did I think I could
Only get to know you when my life was good?
When everything just falls in place
The easiest thing is to give you praise
Now it all seems upside down

'Cause my whole world is caving in
But I feel you now more than I did then
How can I come to the end of me
But somehow still have all I need?
God I want to know you more
Maybe this is how it starts
I find you when I fall apart

Blessed are the ones who understand
They've got nothing to bring but empty hands
Nothing to hide and nothing to prove
Our heartbreak brings us back to you
And it all seems upside down

'Cause my whole world is caving in
But I feel you now more than I did then
How can I come to the end of me
But somehow still have all I need?
God I want to know you more
Maybe this is how it starts
I find you when I fall apart

I don't know how long this will last
I'm praying for the pain to pass
But maybe this is the best thing that has ever happened to me

'Cause my whole world is caving in
But I feel you now more than I did then
How can I come to the end of me
But somehow still have all I need?

God I want to know you more
Maybe this is how it starts
I find you when--
You will find me when--
I fall apart

Fall Apart by Josh Wilson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3EWHPp80EA

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 39: The Power of Prayer

New every morning are His mercies.

Last night it stormed.  Shaking the walls and jolting me out of slumber, thunder erupted and lightening poured through the blind slats.  I went to bed late; I didn't sleep well.

Yet, somewhere between writing it all down last night and prayers going up, I feel better today.  Stronger, more able to block the thoughts that bring me down.  I really do know that God is there, the butterflies are His gift to me, my family, and everyone who shares the butterflies with us.

As the day ambles on toward tonight, I'm sure the day's stuff will weigh on me, and the tired will bring that hard to wrestle sadness.  While I am strong and feeling hope, I wanted that person who may be having an awful, miserable, lonely day to know that God is there, He cares, He wants me, you, all of us to cast every care we have on Him, and I want that person to know especially that His mercies are new every morning, and His faithfulness is great, infinite, always more than enough.

I don't know all those people who pray for us.  I just know that those prayers are making all the difference.  Zach, I believe, knows about your prayers and mine.  He's okay, I'm not okay, and that has to be okay, until God walks us through to a better place or just holds us in this one.

To God be the Glory for the things He has done through those of you lifting us up.  Prayer - so powerful, so perfect, so purposeful - will not go unheard or unfelt.  I feel it.  It feels peaceful, happy, thankful.

His mercies are new every morning.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 38: Me-Gideon

"O my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us?"

  

I am overwhelmed with sadness, guilt, shame, self loathing, and all that jazz.  And covered, shrouded, engulfed by butterflies.  Everywhere, they are just everywhere.

I’ve become Gideon.  Trying hard to just call the butterflies a myth, not real, imagined, not from God – like I’m daring Him to skip a day and at the same exact moment absolutely hoping He won’t.

Everything’s all jumbled and making no sense.

The list of all the ways I went wrong with Zach is a line around the building kind of long.  Peter MD always asks me if I’m isolating.  Yes, as much as possible.  It’s too hard to be around people and “be” normal – like I will ever be normal again – I'm the self that mothered Zach into the grave.  I don’t want anyone’s opinion on how I should think differently or better or Godly or holy or trusting or whatever the advice might be.  Put my shoes on and then you can say whatever you want.  Otherwise, be quiet.  Is this the angry, depressed, hopeless stage of grief.  Who cares.

There’s still a black worm hole in my mind where the knowledge of what’s happened is hidden.  After almost 8 months, the almost time it took to grow Zach in my womb, I still can’t connect what happened to real reality.  Lately, the movie of that night is played over and over and over in my brain like it happened to someone else but my mind understands it happened to us but at the same time won’t believe that it happened at all – when is Zach coming home?  Your football jersey hangs empty, waiting.  Come home.

I drift into sleep the images playing and wake to them in the morning.  The reel looping around and around again and again. Things don’t get better, just different and harder as the time lapses and I don’t want to be around people who think I should be living all is well when I can’t even look at his pictures.  My stomach lurches when I see him, look at him, remember that last moment of him, how him there on the floor is my fault.  How does a mother not want to see her boy?  How can that be right?  Pictures too painful. Another mother thing I don't have right. 

So many can’ts in life now.  Can’t look at his photo.  Can’t sleep without dread dreams.  Can’t help wanting and needing to isolate from people.  Can’t feel hope. Can’t talk about it.  Can’t socialize.  Can’t listen to what others think I should or should not do.  Don’t care.  Can’t know what I know to be true is true.  God.  He’s true and real and alive.  But right now I’m Gideon.  Make the ground wet, and me dry.  Rain on me, but keep the ground dry.  One butterfly, 10 butterflies, a hundred, a thousand, every every every day butterflies and still You must show me more.  Show me it’s You.  Tell me Zach is warm and cuddled and loved by a better love than I failed to give him.  I want to know and believe and know.

I can only write it down trying to make sense of the senseless.  Don’t make me speak words out loud – the price is too high, a price I can’t survive.  I can’t be me and I don’t know who I am supposed to be.  I don't like the me I've been.  Make me invisible or make me new again.

When God knew how this parenting mothering would turn out, why didn’t He give Zach to someone else?  Someone who could get it right.  Someone who could grow him all the way to grown-up.  Mother’s day…and my son is dead. And motherhood is so scary now.  A mystery of how to be different, squeeze out a different ending, fix what’s broken; with Zach it’s too late.  Too late.  Forever too late for me to mother my son and get it right.  And my daughters – how do I get it right with them?  How does a broken mother – mother?  And they are precious, and I love them with my whole self and do they know and feel and see and hear that love?  Zach on the floor - somehow, I did it all wrong. This mothering.  Now, how do I get it right, better, different, or is it the same?  And if I didn’t know with Zach, how can I know ever at all?

Right now I feel I deserve to feel a floundering failure, hanging off the edge of a cliff, only air under my feet, barely clinging to a life with a road ahead.  Barely.  So many times in reliving the life history of my life’s mistakes, I wondered if God would punish me by taking my child or children.  I shared this with another mother who shared the same feelings with me.  Is this punishment because it sure doesn’t feel like grace unless the grace is for Zach and God saving him from me.  If this is self pity, I don’t know how to not ask these questions;  I don’t know how to stop my mind careening dangerously around the bends of my life to arrive at a place where I am okay.  And only God can do it but is He even there and are the butterflies just my wish that He is really real and Zach is really there and this is really working together for good.  Isn’t that ridiculous to imagine – that a mother’s son is dead and that’s working toward some good?  His ways, God's ways, are not my ways.  His thoughts are not my thoughts.  My thoughts are deeply dark and just sad.  Sad.

Would I be thinking a different way if Zach had gone some other way?  I don’t wear those shoes so how can I know?  How can I know another mother’s grief when I can’t even decipher my own?  Sad.  Ugly.  Dark.

Maybe there is one other person this writing might help or ease the aloneness and sorrow over the too lateness, the unchangeable, the endless why’s and what if’s.  No matter how much it is said, no matter how much others wish it to not be so, I know that if Zach had been given another mother, a better mother, a different mother, that night wouldn’t be the nightmare.  And if I’d known, would I have given him up to that mother to change the ending - like the mother who gave her babe to keep him from being cut in half.  Could I be that mother?  How would a mother give up a son, but I do want a different ending, a different mother, a mother who could’ve known and helped and saved.  I wasn’t different.  I didn’t know.  I didn’t help.  I didn’t save.  Another mother I wasn’t.  I am just me and it wasn’t enough.  And how do I live with that?  How do I keep taking steps?  Michael, Taylor, Madison.  Step…step…step…faltering step by step.

If only.  I wish.  It’s too late.  Why God did you give him to me?  How can this be Your plan?  How can this be worked together for good?  Butterflies. ? ? ?  How why what if if only.  I’m Gideon.  I need the butterflies – even though right now this life minute I can hardly believe in them any more.  I’m broken.  It doesn’t feel like healing; it feels like hell.  I need to believe in butterflies even when I can’t.  Hear the prayers I can’t speak.  I don’t want to pray.  I’m too tired.  To heavy are the weighted shoes I wear. 

Isn’t truth that things have to continue the down spiral to bring the Savior back to gather us to Himself.  I don’t want a better world.  I don’t want the tides to turn.  I want to be swept up into the bosom of Christ and end this nightmare – seeing Zach in the light of the Lord’s face to face.  Trudge onward Christian soldier.  Wounded, bleeding, hopeless, toward the Hope that will heal.  Trudge on.  When will it be well with my soul?  Trudge on.  Lord make it so.

 Lord, why?  Why has this happened to us?

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 37: Grief Still Sucks

 

O Lord, make haste to help me

Today was the deadline.




Due?  Insurance enrollment.  I was fine.  Almost done. And then there it was.  I was unprepared. I had to delete Zachery Michael Sinclair.  Can you imagine deleting your child?  Will this ever get any easier?

It will always just be what it is.  It sucks.  Very hard week full of butterflies.  Come quickly, Lord.  Come quickly.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 36: Relationships

Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.

Relationship.  That's what we're called to have.  Christ wants relationship not religion.  In living a different life without Zachery - living with his death, living a whole new family life - this has caused me to really, deeply contemplate my relationship with the Lord.  Before Zachery died, I was a Christian.  I believed.  I studied, read, learned, attended a Bible study church; my faith was strong.  But it was as strong as a cheap, wet paper napkin - and I didn't even know it.

It's funny how I kinda lived life thinking I was really something in the Lord.  Having studied and memorized many verses as a child, I could quote my Bible, tell the stories, share the Gospel, and "be" a Christian.  What I know now is that "being" a Christian isn't the same thing as being in a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Think about the hallmarks of remarkable relationships:  honor, integrity, trust, loyalty, honesty, steadfastness, kindness, caring, selflessness, love through thick and thin til death do us part.  Relationship.  I'm only now beginning to understand that idea - Christ wants relationship.  Before Zachery died, I didn't really comprehend the idea of complaining or yelling or screaming or laughing at or with God, with Jesus.  But isn't that relationship?  Aren't the best relationships those where we can bare our souls, hearts, hurts, scars, hilarity, joy, laughter til tears.  Isn't that relationship?

How did I miss that simple concept.  I won't put it tritely - Jesus doesn't want to be my friend.  He's the holy God, creator of the Universe - not my friend.  But He is my champion.  He is my Savior.  He is my grace.  He is who I can crawl to with my best and worse - I mean He already knows it all anyway - so why have I been slow to grow to know that He wants me to share it all with him - the good, the bad, the ugly - and so often what I need to share is bad and ugly. Yep, that's me.  That's honestly me and Lord, You already know.  So what did I miss and why didn't I talk and speak to you like we are in a real, tangible, loving relationship?  How did I not know how to pray and that prayer is conversation, truth, all of it - complaining, screaming, laughing, sharing, loving - all of it.

Relationship.  To have relationship, I have to trust, honor, be loyal and steadfast, cry out in joy, pain, love, hate, imperfection, scarred, brokenhearted, and laughing.  He wants it all.  Imagine that.  No matter what it is, He already knows.  His grace is ALREADY sufficient for me - even if I am just figuring out what that really means.

I read a poster on Pinterest the other day that said,

"Sometimes the things we can't change end up changing us." 

 Wow.  Truth.  Zach, I can't change.  And that has changed me.  It has changed my relationship with Him and with everyone else.  Every day the butterflies come.  Every day I realize that the more I know the Lord, the more inexaustible He becomes and the more humble I grow knowing that if I were to read and study, study and read God's word every second of every minute of every hour of every day for the rest of my life, I'd still be barely out of the "milk" stage.  Relationship.  Give it to Him.  He will carry the burden of all those things we can't change which change us.  Relationship.  Trust Him.  He knows already everything we wish He didn't know and He loves us anyway.  Imagine that.  The Holy God, creator of the universe, Savior - He loves us anyway.

Relationship.  He will give you rest.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 35: He Can Do It

There have been lots of live butterflies today.

Lately, I’ve been choked by guilt.  Guilt is difficult to overcome and forgiveness impossible.  Forgiveness for all the lists of things I wish I could change and all the “ifs” that line up one on top of the other.  I don’t want to be a whiner.  There have been good days, even great days.  A 47^th surprise party given by the man who still makes my palms sweat and who still makes my heart pound and who is really the only other person who knows exactly what I am going through – there have been good days.  And there are good things, people, friends, family.  It’s only that those good days take so much out of us that we recover as if we’ve been hit with all of this all over again.  Never knowing what will wipe us out is tricky.

Which brings me to this whole idea of isolation.  First of all, Peter MD asks me about it every time I check in, and I always tell the truth.  Raeann and the tribe are too pushy to let me isolate completely, but that’s pretty much all I want to do.  The need to hide and avoid and be invisible comes from the fact that each time I meet someone I haven’t seen since Zach’s death, the whole experience wells up inside me, and I am slammed with the grief, the suffocating panic, the stabbing pain.  It is just easier to be alone with those few people who have seen the worst of us at our worst.  Not only that, but I think the whole “be still and know I am God” command kind of demands an isolation of sorts.  Being still and alone or simply quiet with the safe people isn’t such a bad thing – no matter what Peter MD says about it.  He hasn’t been in our shoes, and I hope he never is.

On Sunday, it was really bad.  Flashback after flashback bombarded my mind and the tears came again and again.  That night is something we will all carry for the rest of our lives only to drop away and disappear when we too, like Zach, are face to face with our Redeemer.  It’s horrific.  Memories no one should be forced to carry.  And yet, God allowed that.  

Sunday was bad.  I felt hopeless and helpless and crushed again, and Monday was the same.  I’ve never experienced grief like this – where the “gone” person was with me every day and night for 13 years.  He’s missed by everyone, but they didn’t have him day in and day out so the hole in them is different than the one in us.  There’s just an empty space all the time, a hole, a very deep one.    Lately, I’ve been hit with the deaths of several other people, and I wonder about and pray for the ones who’ve lost the everyday of the person who’s gone.  Their grief is a place that most of us don’t know yet.  Most of us haven’t lost a child or a spouse.  That every single day hole is deep.

And then there’s God and what He’s doing in the midst of all this.  Of course there are the never ending butterflies – every single day- every single one.  As for church, we’ve been doing “home” church, listening to Bible lessons crowded around our kitchen table.  And, I read my Bible almost every day to stay on track with my “through the Bible chronologically” in a year plan.  So part of my reading Sunday morning was Psalm 34.  Reading through it, I stopped.  Part of that Psalm has been quoted to me many times since Zach died, but I had never looked it up or knew exactly what the context was:

¹⁷ The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them;
   he delivers them from all their troubles.
¹⁸ The LORD is close to the brokenhearted
   and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

I read that in my Bible Sunday morning.  Later, as we listened to our Sunday morning lesson, again, there was Psalm 34, specifically those same verses.  The Lord is close to me with my broken heart and crushed spirit.  Okay so a nice coincidence.  That Psalm 34.

Monday night I soaked in my new tub.  So down and depressed and just sad.  Trying to pick myself up and feed my mind with something good, I thumbed to my place in the Marsha gift of Confessions of a Grieving Christian.  Have you guessed yet that again that message – that Psalm 34 message about God being close to me and my broken heart and crushed spirit was right there in the chapter of that book.  Right there again!  Three times in two days.  I guess I should pay attention when God speaks.

 What I am learning in all this grief and sadness and pain is that it is alright to feel it.  How many times do we read about the tearing of clothes, the smearing of ashes, the gnashing of teeth over tragedy in the scriptures?  Lots in the Old Testament for sure.  I don’t have to feel good, or better, or even okay.  I just need to know that God is there to save me – each day, every day, especially in this.  It’s the isolation that is teaching me who He is.  Peter MD may not like that isolation address, but isolation is where I am until God moves me.  And He will have to move me.  I can’t do it.  I can’t forgive myself.  But He can teach me forgiveness.  I can’t stop asking why.  But He can change the question.  I can’t stop the hole.  He can fill it.

So, no matter how many times those people out there tell me what they think is best for me, only He knows.  And I am very comfortable although miserable with my broken heart because He is close to me.  He knows.  And He will save me.

 

I can’t do it.

He is close to the brokenhearted.  He will save the ones who are crushed in spirit.  And He will keep reminding me with those butterflies that Zach is exactly right where God wants him to be, and that over and over reminder will slowly knit together this broken heart and heal this crushed spirit.  He can do it.

Butterfly Chronciles Volume 34: Death and Taxes

Today I did our taxes.  In the process, I had to answer questions about my kids and answer about Zach that he died in 2011 and how many months had he lived with us?  We render unto Caesar.  We render unto God.

I see the world through a different pair of eyes.  I'm glad.  I just don't like how I got this new pair of glasses.  Sharing a birthday dinner with friends last night, we spoke about survival.  And those who don't.  I don't know why I get up each day, put on make-up, dress, and continue to put one step in front of the other.  Unless all those self destructive years of doing everything but honoring God and finally turning back around made me strong for this journey.  Choices?  It doesn't feel like a choice this life I'm living, but just the right thing to do - to keep going.  I think about that song that says "every step is one step closer to you"...for me that's one step closer to Zach.

I'm southern, completely.  Every time we Southerners come face to face with another Southerner, "How are you?" is the phrase we've said since we were born.  And "fine" is the answer.  Always "fine" or some kindred derivative.  I'm working on a new answer.  Although the asker never knows it, every time I'm asked, "How are you?", my mind immediately thinks of Zach, and how fine I am not. It's not fine or okay or good.  Survivable.  Different.  Anything but "fine."  So, I'm practicing other answers that are true.  "So blessed.  Eternally secure.  Graced out.  Thankful.  Saved.  Growing in Christ."  So many answers that are just so much truer than "fine."

I want to be a planter of seeds.  Or a waterer of seeds already planted.  I don't want to be "fine," and I never knew that before.  "Fine" is not enough.  Not nearly enough.  Through it all, I'm everything but fine, and that's just fine with me.

I don't understand it.  I don't know why.  Maybe soon I won't ask that question anymore.  I'm praying for that day.  What I do know is that the presence of God puts the energy and motion into every single step I'm able to take.  I won't ever be fine again.  I don't ever want to be fine again.  But I will keep taking one step after another - every day closer to Zach.  Life is fatal.  Plant seeds.  Don't just be "fine."  It's just not enough.

And every day, it's not just fine that I am given butterfly after butterfly.  It's so much more than just fine, and that's just fine with me.