Butterfly Chronicles Volume 62: The Vision

"My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the 

strength of my heart and my portion forever."

The butterflies come. Today, the vision came again.

The field is alive with a wheat glimmering gold painted across miles and miles under a sky so blue my mind can't hold it all, the wheat a color not rivaled by the sun, a light so overwhelming I slowly grasp it is Him, Christ - a light alive all about and around that waving wheat.  Zach stands in the field, wheat up to his knees, the light in him.  He's so still, smiling, peaceful, content - words too small to tell what I see. 

Although I only see it in my soul, I know joy drips and pours out of Zach silky thick, a joy I could reach out and hold and feel alive in my soul, carressing my cares away like quiet ocean waves gently tickling the sand.  Happiness is a word minutely incomparable to what I can feel Zach feels.  It must be like what the stars felt when God breathed them into existence and why they hang in the sky proclaiming God's glory.

This vision, I know is a glimpse of Zach in heaven.  In motion from brain to tapping keyboard keys, words are inexhaustibly incapable of fully painting this picture for you or for me.  Words fail.  God is everywhere in that shimmering chandelier of light and wheat.  It is new and startling to me each time the vision comes. God makes it new every time - the discovery of Him all around and Zach in the light.  This God all around and in Zach unnerves me - it's too big for me in this flesh body.  It speaks its way into the pieces of my broken heart caressing and washing me clean of grief and filling me with the light, Jesus.

This vision is more real than anything I've lived in this life.  It is not something my mind could imagine.  The song of life mingling with God everywhere and Zach smiling a happiness so big it squeezes me breathless, but not the breathlessness of grief.  It is the breathlessness of love so perfect my soul floats above any pain as if I know what it will feel like when heaven is my home and pain is not something I can remember.

This is the hope that is within - this God who is bigger than words.  He infuses this vision full of hope and joy and in grace He shares with me what it will be like to meet Zach in a place more real than reality.  My heart knows this place is true and grace and perfection.  What a miracle for God to soothe my soul this way.  Awashed in grace, bound up in grace, perfect in His grace.  I love you, Zach.   Your heaven happiness gives me hope.  I've met the God who has made you whole, and I will meet you again someday - the vision becoming real, and we will glory in God's light in His golden field of wheat. 

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 61: You Can't Take it With You

Thanksgiving over.  Climbing steps, returning to winter rest the attic dwellers - chairs, tables, to sleep til Christmas.  Topping that last attic step, eyes skipping over Zach named boxes stacked, a life, all packed away in brown cardboard. 

The last time I stroked Zach's hair, he coffin slumbered on white satin.  Dead. Cold.  Stroke those silky kid heads, and feel the life under your hand.

Commit to memory the feel of warm hands in yours.  Skip, smell the flowers, the spring, the frost of the season, and store the child eyes filled with wonder and awe tight in your brain - lock 'em up those memories.
All that stuff that covers shelvesfloorswallscabinetsatticsclosets and fills boxes, doesn't breathe, doesn't have a beating heart.  As dead as Zach's earthly tent in that coffin bed. 

Trust me when I say that if you lose a child, you will never ever ever ever feel like you had enough time with him.

Learn from the child faith your children have in a God so big Zach will never know all of Him.

Really, that Jesus stuff, that's what matters.  All the rest of the stuff...someday it'll be boxed up, your life, my life, stuck up in somebody's attic.  'Cause just like Zach, we can't take it with us.  Jesus took Zach.  My arms feel so empty.  I'm gonna go hug my girls and husband and feel them warm and hearts beating and alive. Live the stuff that matters.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 60: Wimpy Christian

All those grief books, stacked up, not speaking how I feel, telling me blessing comes, me miles away from destination joy.

Heroes they are; I am not.

Abraham: an alter left empty at my hands.

Noah: me laughing in disbelief.

Joseph: my plotting revenge, planning destruction.

Shadrach, Meschach, Abednego: a fear gripped heart - mine, facing fire.

Daniel: these ears roared to frantic panic.


A recanter of  faith - me - to escape bonds of a burning stake.

Do you ever doubt as strong as their faith: those Abrahams, Noahs, Josephs, Furnace Facers, Daniels?

It is easy for me to forget Jesus, cross splayed and the cost to those who died for faith. Filled with doubt,   I forget, my faith floats away on the wind.

Since Zach died, eternity beckons.  Calling me.  I doubt.  I forget. Is it real, true, this grace story?

To live is Christ; to die is gain - that's what He says, Jesus.  That shot rang out; Zach fell into the arms of his savior. Some days belief wanes. God, forgive me for missing him so much that it is hard to believe You. Does your faith quiver, waver, fail, ever?

Eternity beckons.  Live Christ.  I am a wimpy Christian. I doubt.


I'm waiting for the blessing. God deliver.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 59: This Doesn't Feel Like Love

For the second time, I dreamed about Zach - a vivid, filled with real warm bodies kind of dream.  Crawling out of it at 5:00 am, I rushed downstairs to write it all down so I wouldn't forget - those precious dream moments with my son.  He hugged me hard.  I said, "I love you."  He said,  "I love you too."

Then he said with so much love I could taste it, "You' ll get here, it'll just be harder."  He meant heaven, and I knew that.  "It'll just be harder."

I'm a wuss.  He's right.  It's harder.  I don't want to be a light.  I don't want to be a witness.  I don't even want to leave my house.

Then, Zach's voice floats, painted in happiness; I feel him and see him saying, "You'll get here.  It'll just be harder."

Isn't that the best description of this life for all of us.  It'll be harder.  For all of us still in "The Fall,"  it'll be harder.


God, this is too hard.  This doesn't feel like love.

Zach said, "You'll get here.  It'll just be harder."

I love you, son.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 58: Grace Clings

Some days butterflies aren't enough. 

Some days faith is faithless.

Some days I don't want sunshine.

Grace clings like a spider web, stubborn.

My dreams are bad.

I demand a wake up, a redo, an undo, a rewind to sense that makes sense and has an ending I can understand.

A child should not die.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 57: Heart Holes and Hugs

                        The Lord is close to the brokenhearted 

 and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

It gets more difficult to write this blog as each day rolls by. Living in a world I can barely survive, I feel indulgent when talking about the pain as if the world needs to hear any more about it; I mean just look around.  How does it all get fixed? 

I already know the answer, but it is a heavy burden on a broken heart to see so much sad and bad and hate and too late in the world.

On October 10, I posted on Zach's FB wall and wrote I wish I could hug you.

The next night, I dreamed.  And there was my Zach.  Waiting for his hug. Not an I'm 13 so I'm wriggling out of it before it starts kind of hug.  No, this was a hug where he hugged me back as hard as I hugged him forward.

Then he hugged me again. Warm and full and arms wrapped all around me.

He smiled, kept smiling.  His smile like sun fingers caressing the cracks in my broken heart.

Today, lots of days, but not all days, I can't stop crying.

I never knew how big my heart was until his piece went missing. The hole is so big.

This isn't the way it is supposed to be.

I wish I could hug you, Zach.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 56: Root of Bitterness

Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, 

be put away from you, with all malice: And be ye kind one to another, 

tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.

Frame of reference.  We all have one, but what is it?  We waltz, or trudge, or skip, or skid through life absorbing the sights, sounds, best and worst that life has to offer. Upon a metaphorical peg board we hang information, grouping ideas and experiences together to enrich and enlarge our view and understanding of the world around us. Tick tock tick tock the clock twirls the seconds by and our perspectives, perceptions, and preferences mold and morph into new or altered or changed ideas, and we mush and mash this all together and add it to our peg board.

What is your experience?  How do you view life?  Upon what do you base the meaning of your existence?

Unlike most people, from our peg board hangs the suicide of our son.  An experience I am thankful does not hang for most people.

But how do other people on another peg board deal with a suicide?  We've heard things like, "Why are you still sad?"  If you know me (and I mean know the real me and not the "all the world's a stage" with a mask on me), you know it is highly likely that my one and only desire when those words tumble into daylight is to sucker punch the person, kick him when he is down, and then walk away nursing the bruise on my fist with a gritty, pissed smile on my face.

Did I really just write that down?  Yup.  But, the thing is, I know what I believe, and I know why I believe it, and I know those horrendous, angry, bitter, aggressive thoughts aren't who I want to be although I truly could be all that. Choice. Those things aren't what and who God wants me to be.  So much life is being learned on this nightmare ride we're strapped into.  To be saved from the darkness, we have to let go of the desire to punch the crap out of that person who has a peg board filled with daisies and moonbeams, and pimples and shaving rash bumps as the most traumatic islands in their lives.  I should be happy for them, knowing they are ignorant of a suicide kind of pain.

Get rid of the bitterness. Get rid of the wrath. Get rid of the anger, and clamor, and evil speaking.  Get rid of the malice.  A haggard picture these paint.  Let them go.

It is hard to turn toward the light.  It is hard to put on a smile.  It would be so easy just to give up.  But really, what would the point of that be.  I don't want people to ever say, "Well, it was just a matter of time.  We knew she'd be a drunk, or a pill popper, or as wrinkled and shriveled as a prune because bitterness ate her life.  We knew it was just a matter of time."

Nope.  Not for me.  I have to remember that some words shouldn't come to the light.  Some words should be swallowed hard, pushing them down, eating the bile, slamming the lips tight against the dark spew that could so easily come and has, and I'm not gonna hit anyone.  Stop it.  Swallow it.  Silence it.  Marshie said don't be bitter.  Okay, Marshie, I'm wearing my big girl panties and working it out.

Just to keep it in writing - not a day has gone by.  Not one single day has gone by without butterflies.  Not a single day.