Butterfly Chronicles Volume 74: "I Keep Waking Up"

I posted on FB what Beth Moore's mother-in-law said years and years after her 3 year old child burned and died in a fire.

"How did you live?" Beth whispered when her own child was 3.

"I didn't mean to.  I just kept waking up."

If God uses Zach's choice, it misses me.  Reality unfolds with God expecting our trust to follow His map.

Is the "I keep waking up" His point?

When someone says they think I am so strong, my mind rocks with shock.  I'm so sorry to tell you that strength evades me, lost. Travel the strength road?  The compass weighs too much.

Is the unbridled strength I see in Taylor what she sees? Does she believe in her strength?  Writing her heart, she pours on the page her blazing honesty, her vulnerability, and she inspires.  God forces her to live beyond her years.  Through it all, she succeeds, she perseveres, she handles the storms kicking and screaming her way to triumph. Determinedly she plods along life's roads. She embraces God's challenges as smoothly as waves swim around the rocks, and I want to be her. Brave. Kind.  Braver and kinder than me. She will survive.

Does Madison know she oozes strength and splashes it onto me? Does she see what I see? She travels confidently forward not even aware of a need to ask permission. A solver of unsolvable problems, she rockets ahead, fearless, doubt cremated in the fiery propulsion.  She envisions outcomes long before reality catches up. Independent.  Smarter than me. Hers, an old soul, marveling at life in such clarity I stand awed.  I learn from her - more than I can explain.  She will survive.

Michael, because of his Savior, saves us, blanketing us in his strength.  Does he see his strength in the man in the mirror? Fear grasps me, evil and dark - it says he will leave you. He will leave you.  Michael says, STOP! Stop believing fear; play up. Play up, he demands, and it comes true.  Playing up beats back fear - Michael knows this. Holding me and our girls, wearing the armor of God, Michael is armed with God's two-edged sword. In Michael's strength, God reveals He breathed life into Michael just for us. Michael shimmers, full of grace, resembling the angels in God's heavenly army. Trusting God, Michael walls us in safety.  Does he feel strong or see his own brand of strong?  He will survive.

We think we know things.  We don't even know what we don't know, and what we don't know fills an infinite universe. God draws the map, and He reveals the legs of the race to whom He will. In the most unlikely ways, God still and every day brings butterflies, and I don't deserve the constant reminders of His plan, and Zach in His plan.  I am not strong.

Maybe God plays us as a movie that we never get to see, a movie only visible by those watching on the outside.   Maybe God simply says, "Go, and keep waking up."

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 74: I Hope I'm Not Talking to You

I hope I'm not talking to you.

This morning I found a letter Zach wrote. Such a sweet, kind, loving boy who I can't ever hug again. Reading it opened the steel door I struggle to keep locked against a pain that almost murders me.  Missing Zach sucks the breath out of me and panic hits as I gasp and can't fill my lungs - over and over this keeps happening.  How can this be real?  How did I miss so much of his life by doing what I thought was right for his tomorrows, pulling out a measuring stick and trying to keep up with all those subjects and activities and classes that all those other mothers were doing.  Trust me.  The stick never stacked up in my favor, and moms, it won't ever stack up in yours.  Hell.

When my kids were small, we spent hours on the couch reading.  Just reading.  Bible stories, funny stories, learning stories.  Just reading.  Something went terribly wrong when I fell into the world of measuring sticks.

You can say I'm not right.  You can try to believe that what you're doing would fill your broken heart if your child died.  Those books, workbooks, math problems, novels you think are so important mean nothing if your kid is dead.  Do you think you would relish the memories of forcing one more page of reading, one more vocabulary word, one more chess match, one more volleyball game, one more rush to on your mark, get set, go, frantic here and there to get your kids to a place you think they should be?  Measure.  Measure.  Measure.

I hope I'm not talking to you.

Where's God in the mix?  Do you spend as much time in the Bible as you speed around in your car spending "quality time" with those kids?  Are you being still enough to even KNOW God's plan or show your kids that to know God He says BE STILL, or are you writing your own book of Proverbs?  I was writing mine, racing to fill hours to bring about "smart" in my kid.  The measuring stick beats me bloody now.  Being still seemed like wasted opportunity to get my kids to smart.  I'd take illiterate, mathless, mispellings, and ignorance in my child to have him back.  I'll wager you would too.

I hope I'm not talking to you.  

Pay attention.  I am right.  Those roads to smart wouldn't fill your broken heart.

Do it now.

Hug your kids.

Stop worrying about their tomorrows. God is bigger than you and knows the plans He has for them. Pull out His measuring stick and USE IT.  Have some fun.  Rejoice in God's book instead of school books that aren't getting anybody to heaven.  Smile.  Laugh.  Play. Bake some cookies.  Slip and slide.  Have a hot dog eating contest. Get some Silly String.  Blow bubbles.  Buy yourself an air-soft gun and get pinged and feel life. Dig in the sand.  Have a water gun fight. Go outside and play chase.  Sweat with them.  Stink with them. Live in the moments with your kids.  You only get one chance, and you'll never know how long God has blessed you with them.

Or don't.  Or don't and relish all those roads to smart you race down and all the moments for smiles you leave behind. Do you want your kids to do to their kids what you are doing to yours?  So hard to stop that push push push to "smart."  I'm so darn guilty.  Don't be me. Smart doesn't fill my broken heart.

I hope I'm not talking to you.

Do you deceive yourself into believing that all you rush around trying to fill your kid up with would comfort you as you lower that kid into a hole in the ground.  Curl up with all that racing and count all those times "HURRY UP" was said more often than "I love you" in a day.

I hope I'm not talking to you.

You can't walk in my shoes. These are golden nuggets from a broken heart that can't be filled with all that smart I worked so hard to impart to my boy.  Those memories don't comfort.  Put down your measuring sticks and pick up your kids.  Or don't...

I hope I'm not talking to you.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 73: How Big is YOUR God?

Is God faithful?

Mother-in-law is dying.  The toll on family weighty  and stressful and impacting others' health.
Decisions must be made.
Hospice is on the horizon.
Funerals are expensive.

     When our children were born, my dad and mom decided to invest money with the goal of having at least $20,000 for our children for college.  Upon Zach's death, my parents gave us that money, Zach's $20,000, for the funeral expenses, grave plot, etc.  How big is YOUR God?  Mine is always more than enough.  All of those expenses - added up on invoices - came to $19,990. $10 left over...

     God's plan is painful: Suicide?  Really God?? REALLY, with butterflies every single day, God continues to show Himself and has since the day Zach died.  If my salvation is based on me and my efforts or accolades or whether or not I agree with God all the time, the doors of heaven would slam shut on me. And I mean HARD.  Thank GOD that salvation is based on who HE is and not on my sorry backside. How big is YOUR God?

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 72: As Kip Dynamite Would Say

Dear Zach,

Grandma Dutsie is dying.  Cancer.  It set up house in her lungs then built a condo in her brain.  She’s tired.  Grandpa’s shoulders roll over with the weight of watching and waiting, and his body grows dimmer with pain. 

I sit on her bed listening to her life lessons.  She says she wonders if she’s done everything she wanted to do.  I say she’s done everything God wanted her to do.

 

She worries about Grandpa.  Who will buy his clothes? 

 
She talks flowers - the smell good kind of lilies – a blanket for her coffin.  I think of your coffin.  Your flowers.  I see my hand stroking your hair resting on a satin pillow. My brain door slams shut.  This talking death rips scabs off my heart.

Crawfish, cousins, a new puppy bird dog, and I see you with your new puppy and remember how happy you were, and I watch K and Connor wrestling all around piled and wrapped up arms and legs, giggling, and you aren’t there and should be there, giggling.

Moni said, “You may not be happy, but be joyful.”  I rebel.

At the most opportune moments, there you are in the butterflies. 

You look like you are handling it so well says the man to Michael.  Survival camouflage covers his broken heart. We meet, and we greet, and we take a partner do-sa-do square dancing around the elephant in the room.  

Zach, eternally I know you grow in grace in the presence of the Lord.  “You’ve got your praise on!” Then doubt drills a skull hole, until all my belief puddles on the ground. I race for hope.  Butterfly wings sew two stitches forward, doubt rips one out.  Slow progress.

I think about asking other suicide mothers to sit in a room with me and cry.

It’s Jesus is risen time.  No confetti egg chases this year.  Madison will hunt eggs with the baby cows and cousins at the ranch and go to the country church in basketball shorts.  We miss our across the street family, all of us spilling into the street in our jammies, scrambling for candy eggs, curb sitting, all faces chocolate coated covered. Laughing.

I miss your 13 years, warm hugs, the army yells, gunfire, Xbox live talk.  I want to see you running and dodging airsoft bullets, to watch you pedal away on your bike - fishing rod bobbing on your shoulder.  I want to gather and drop stinky stain boy smelling shirts and shorts into the washer, to hear you laugh, to watch you lick off the birthday dirt cake mustache. I want all your life back – my heart says I missed so much of you. How did I miss so much of you? 

We’ll walk another day toward eternity, missing you. 

As Kip Dynamite would say:

“Yes I love technology

But not as much as you, you see

But I still love technology

Always and forever.”

You are smiling, and I love you.

Blessed I am to be your mom!

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 71: Hope Asked For...

"And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son."

Although I didn't ask for it in the way I should have, God gave me what I needed - hope - on Madison's birthday.  He's good, right!?!??!

 For the past week, I've been listening to Tony Evans and Beth Moore on "Light Source."  Trying to believe what I question that I believe, I listened to their teachings about pain, suffering, tragedy, and how God takes those events and makes them for His good and for ours.  It took 13 years from Joseph in the well to Joseph saving his family.  If we asked Joseph if the bad times were worth it for the result of the good times - he'd say yes - don't you think?  Over and over it says, "And God was with Joseph."  Tony Evans did a great job of helping me see through my grief that God knows, God goes before us, God does have our best always in mind - even when it appears to suck.

In the shower this morning, again I was wearing the heavy heart of guilt, rolling around and around all the things I did wrong or wish I could change or wish I had known before now.  I got out and put on Beth Moore - lesson 6 on affliction.

She went on and on about how guilt is the breeding ground for affliction, the opening for evil attack.  She then quoted from Hebrews 10:22-23

"...let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. 23Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful..."

She also said that when our conscience is weak and way out of whack, we will be buffeted about by doubts and conflicted about our salvation.  Yes, she said she was conflicted about being saved when she let her past and her guilt bubble up in her soul. I am not alone in wondering if I am really saved.

Okay, okay, God...I'm listening.  You are faithful - even when I am not.  For the first time in 3 weeks, the cloud of deep, deep depression is lifted - and how gracious is God to give that to me on Madison's birthday.

I need hope.  He gives hope.  Be hopeful and hope-filled.  God knows the motivation of our hearts - even when we don't

Zach, someday I hope God will use this situation and what He is teaching me to bless someone else. I will never not hurt over your death, and someday, I will be able to celebrate all the things I did right - I am hopeful.  God is faithful.

Truly, truly, truly, "Without Jesus I Suck," so says my t-shirt. It is truly, truly, truly, true.  He is faithful, regardless of my hope or no hope.

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 70: I Need Some Hope

Dear Zach,

Today I dialed the number for a family coping with serious health issues with their children.  Ring and I couldn’t catch my breath.  A noose around my neck threatened to force tears and gag my mouth.  I thought I would have to hang up.  Offering to set up a Care Calendar, I plummeted back to your death and the door bell rings and the 100 lb weight of a grief trying to open the door – the strength it took to try to be normal, to try not to break down, to try not to envy the food grace givers for their healthy children who came to give me or us a hug.  There came a time when I just couldn't answer the door – and some caretaker would answer it for me.  I want to help this family, Zach, but tragedy vacuums my lungs clean of air, and I gasp, and I cry, and I miss you.  I don’t have anything to give.   But I think I need to give. 

The tribe had lunch recently, parking at a Chuy’s table for so long we tipped the waiter twice.  We talked kids.  My heart so heavy, shoulders hunched, listening to other mothers talk about alive children and tears came.  Alone in a crowd with this heart hurt.  I spoke of regrets, of guilt, of  how every thought I think of you is my failure – pictures where you smile, it feels like I stole that life from you, and I can’t look.  Head barely above water, I sink.  Mom T. talked about sorry’s she still says to her kids for things she did or things she wish she’d done, or things she wished she wouldn't have done.  Like a stiff pair of shoes rubbing raw on the back of an ankle, the sorry’s I can’t say scrape and tear and suck at the raw places in my soul – deeper goes the guilt gash every day.

Zach, ask Paul.  Ask him for me about guilt.  Surely he lived with it, fought with it, struggled against it for all those murders – for all those Christ lovers he hated unto death.  Surely, he did.  Beth Moore said over my Ipad today that God gave her a gift of pain.   Zach, ask God to show me how pain can be a gift and to find a way through this pain to forgiveness.  Days go by, and I don’t want to face another.  Living is a molasses quick sand hand pulling me down into a dark decay of guilt.

How funny I could break into hysterical laughter at people who say, “It’s not your fault.  You did the very best you could.  You are a good mother.”  Really?  What grade do you get as a mother when your child takes his own life?  Are their boys dead, all buried away in a hole in the ground, bodies decaying?  How dare they say that to me.  But they don’t know, and I do know they don’t know. How could they know?  So I am quiet.   We can’t walk in each other’s shoes.  We can only open our hearts to each other and share kindness and love in the midst of all our warts.

Zach, ask Paul.  Ask David.  Ask Noah how it felt to hear the strangled cries of all those God haters.  Did all those dead hands flailing make him feel guilty? Did he fret and wonder over why God chose him for life or over why God chose them for death?  Were his dreams ever filled with the screams of the drowning?  Did David feel guilt over his sins with Bathsheba?  Did he ever wish his life over?  I think about this.  My shoulders hunch over, and I can’t answer the “How are you?” checker talk in the grocery line. What I know for sure is that it took God 13-ish years to take Joseph from the well meant for his evil to a kingdom where God changed evil to good.  Zach, I don’t know if I can wait 13 years or even a day. I don’t understand or see how this sad can ever be turned into glad – or this evil into good.

Why Zach?  There are so many sorry’s I wish I could say.  There are so many hugs, and I love you’s I can’t ever say.  I hope another mother will tell her son.  Tell her son how a suicide son kills his life and kills the lives of those who feel him dead.  Someday, God, let me look back on this burden of shame, regret, guilt, and all the sorry’s I can’t say – let me see how you painted evil into good.  It will be a miracle because alone I am one of the hopeless drowning.

 Zach, I’m sorry.  I would give anything to say sorry, to touch your warm face, and to see your happy’s and smiles and watch you grow up.  Some days I don’t believe in God.  But if I don’t, truly, what is the point?  I can’t give you up into nothingness.  I have to hold on to you in heaven. I struggle to hold onto that place of no more sorrow or pain or tears.  I struggle to believe it is real.  Your hug when you came in the dream tells me it is real, but can you come again?  Can you show me that slice of heaven again to pick me up, to help me carry on for another and another day?

Zach – ask God to show me his turning this evil into good. These scars weigh a body down.  Ask Him to give us hope.

I love you, son. I am sorry.

Mom

Butterfly Chronicles Volume 69: The Sacrifice

We're watching The Bible.  Abraham ties Isaac to the alter and lifts the knife.  The lamb bleats. God provides the lamb.

Madison asks her dad if he would sacrifice her if God told him to.  Fortunately, God doesn't test us that way today he says.

Then she asks me.  No.  I wouldn't if God asked me to.  I couldn't do it.  He knows I couldn't do it.

I thought about that and realized He already took the sacrifice.  No lamb.

Loneliness in a crowd is a strange feeling.  Why does He want us in this place?

Our big girl says God doesn't work.  She says she's tried.  You, mom, she says, have kept your faith.  You have stayed close to God.  You talk about him; you write about it in your blog.

No, I say.  Everything I write is a lie.  I don't believe it.  I don't mean it.  I am not strong.  I am alone.  Just like you and Maddy and Daddy - we are alone.

We live in a barren land where other brothers, other sons grow up.

No, I would never make the sacrifice.  But He didn't ask.

Butterflies.