Tag Archives: Heartache

Once Upon a Butterfly…

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Photo by Bethany Clay

Once upon a time there was a beautiful butterfly…

At the beginning of summer my daughters, Blessing and Hope, captured a caterpillar and put him in a jar. With a little help from me they filled the jar with sticks and leaves, added a little dish for water, poked holes in a tin foil lid, and placed it in the sun.

For weeks we watched him closely. Our little friend, Fuzzy, seemed content to crawl around and munch on leaves. Chomp! Chomp! Chomp! He’d munch his way through a jar full, and we’d clean it out and fill it up with more.

The desired result was obvious, Blessing and Hope couldn’t wait to see this wormy little guy transform into a butterfly before their very eyes.

However, a quick Google search led us to believe that our caterpillar was actually on his way to becoming a moth instead. No matter, with a little more research we found that he especially liked milkweed and stocked his jar accordingly.

What research didn’t tell us was how much and how quickly milkweed leaves turn to fuzzy grey mold. Seemingly overnight Fuzzy started his cocooning phase as our milkweed started to rot.

So there we had it, in a few days time, a jar full of mold and one cocoon hanging by a silver thread.

Fuzzy’s future did not look bright.

A week or two passed. I should really throw that thing out, I thought to myself one morning while looking at the jar placed over our kitchen sink. There was zero sign of life from Fuzzy, his cocoon now covered in mold. There’s just no way…

Where there is no way He makes a way.

The next day my girls and I were in the middle of our morning schoolwork (science lessons, ha! ha!) when my mom called from the kitchen, “Blessing! Hope! Come look!”

Squeals of delight filled our house as we saw what she held in her hand: A tiny moth, freshly hatched, flapping its shriveled wings.

A living thing. A new creation.

Here we are at the end of summer. It’s been months since I’ve come to this blog in part because this past season, hasn’t differed too greatly from Fuzzy’s time in our jar.

Not long after my last post, a post where my hopes were high for diving into my writing…getting lost…as I called it, I derailed into a different sort of lost-ness.

Wounds and hurt and sins from my past, I thought long dealt with and buried, resurfaced with a nasty, rotting vengeance.

My relationship with Mister Wonderful, my dreams for writing, my desire to homeschool, even my hope for our family business and our home building project, seemed to dangle by a thread.

I realized it one morning in May. I needed help. I needed healing. I needed a cocoon wrapped around me. Love pulled tight. A miracle worked on the inside.

For the first time in my life I sought and found the help I needed in the form of a Christian counselor willing and able to take on my yuck and decay. Lovingly, wisely, she tended my leaves through this summer season, stocking my jar with good things to chew on.

Every few weeks I was fed. Truth. Love. Possibilities. A little more, a little more, until at last it started to happen, that wrapped up feeling I longed for. That wound up tight, impossibly fragile yet impossibly safe place of not just knowing I am healed, forgiven, loved but also feeling it. Experiencing it. The reality of the cocoon.

To emerge a living thing. A beautiful thing. To stretch my wings and enter into life and all He has for me, a new creation.

A friend once told me that when a caterpillar goes into its cocoon it is physically broken down to its very atoms and is from there rebuilt, remade, transformed into a butterfly.

As a Christian I’ve always known in my head that God loves me and, yes, there have been countless times when I felt His love in my life.

But this is something different. This is love, this is Him, going down to my atoms, defining who I am.

And this defining, redefines everything. My identity, my marriage, my desires, my hopes, my dreams.

This feeling, this awareness would have been enough for me, but the Author is writing a fairy tale and nothing short of happily ever after would do.

Spring house at Stoney Creek Farm

Fresh out of the cocoon He gave me a storybook opportunity to spread my crumpled wings and fly.

At a bed & breakfast called Stoneycreek Farms in Boonsboro, MD (an old 1800’s farmhouse refurbished into an inn) my three best writer friends and I met for a week of beauty, rest, and writing. We’re talking my own king size bed, my own fancy bathroom, hours and hours of writing time, dinner and laughter and movies each night with kindred spirit friends, long talks, walks down flowery paths and creek side trails, porch swing reading, soaking in the love of God for one whole week.

It was like one long, passionate kiss from my Savior.

“It’s time, Dearest,” He told me as I prepared to leave. “Write for me. Unleash your pen.”

Photo by Bethany Clay

How so very like Him. To call out my heart from the deep, from the almost discarded, and supply me with more than I need, with more than I could dream of or think to ask for. To fuel the burning dream inside me. To awaken me to all things good, to His love and care for me.

While at the inn, as we now call it, we saw them just about everywhere.

Butterflies…

Unfurling all kinds of magic and beauty, they fluttered all around us.

My friend Bethany spotted one in particular, a swallowtail perched on a flower, and captured him with her camera.

“He was missing one of his tails,” she told me as she described her amazing find.

“Oh!” I said with that spark of happy I get when schoolwork meets life. “My girls and I just read about that in one of our lessons. It’s part of their defense mechanism. They have these long tails that break off when a predator tries to capture them, allowing them to get free.”

Nodding, Bethany smiled. “He’s a survivor.”

“That’s right,” I said. “A survivor.”

Where there is no way He makes a way…

A chance to break free.

Miracles worked in darkness.

Worms transformed with love and the magic of butterfly wings.

When Your Heart Feels All Achy-Breaky

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Last weekend while driving the twists and turns of Michigan country roads I found my mind drifting away to another place and time. 

The weather was warm and bright, a treat for mid January, and the soft crooning of James Taylor filled our mini van. The combination did me in and before I knew it I was gone, gone, gone, Gone to Carolina in My Mind.

The blue sky and warm sunshine, the music, it all took me back to my days in North Carolina and all the people I love there. An ache lodged in my heart. Everything in me wanted to turn back the clock, hit the road, head south.

It’s a rather disruptive feeling, these aches that appear in the midst of an otherwise contented spirit. I love my life here in Michigan. I wouldn’t trade it for all the sunny south, but there are times like these when I miss that place…when I miss those people so much it hurts. I mean, really and truly and physically hurts. It takes my breath away.

When this happens there’s always an intense temptation to avoid the ache, to avoid the hurt. 

When I’m cooking supper, I love to set my playlist on shuffle and let my mind wander as noodles boil and beef sizzles in the skillet. Inevitably a song will play that triggers some forgotten ache.

Alan Jackson’s Remember When makes me miss my Uncle John.

Passion’s Oceans makes me pine to relive the day my little Promise was born.

Elizabeth Mitchell’s You are My Sunshine makes me remember, all too clearly, how fast these days of tiny feet dancing through the house will be nothing but a memory.

When the first notes of these songs trickle into the room my impulse is to hit skip, to not let my heart go there, to avoid feeling the ache. 

And sometimes that’s ok. Sometimes, for whatever reason, it’s ok to go numb, but I’m learning there are other times when it’s good and right and needed to allow my heart to feel. 

God created me to be a deeply emotional being, and He also created me to bring those emotions to Him, to use them as a vessel through which He can work.

When triggers like these arise in smells, music, pictures, memories, in tiny details that fill our lives we always have a choice. Allow our hearts to feel whatever they long to feel and take those feelings to God allowing Him to show us what He’s after or block our hearts from pain, from His work, from transformation and healing.

What I experienced this weekend, in my longing for North Carolina is a beautiful reminder to me to resist the urge to block my heart from pain and consequently from Him.

And yes, it’s confusing, yes it’s disruptive, yes it’s painful and hard. But it’s also an invitation. An invitation from the King of my heart to draw closer to Him, to let Him do something beautiful and sustaining in me.

How else do we get through life intact than by aching and feeling and opening to Him? 

And what are these aches and desires really but a longing for Him and His Kingdom? My heart may ache for Carolina, for the faces of family and friends. But on a deeper level I’m also yearning for Him, for His beauty, for relationship, for a time and a place when there will be no more good-byes.

I’m aching for my King and His kingdom.

I’m aching for His work in me.

I’m aching for home.

Dear ones, when an ache crops up in your heart don’t ignore it. Like a winding, twisting, back-country road, follow it to Him.

For When You Just Want to Shut Down and Stop Your Heart from Bleeding

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Tarheel PinA few weeks ago I posted a blog about what to do when your life feels like a March Madness buzzer beater and you’re on the losing team. Little did I know this was just the fate that would soon befall my beloved UNC Tarheels.

For anyone not into the drama of college basketball and the NCAA tournament, last Monday the University of North Carolina went head to head against Villanova in the championship game. With just seconds left on the clock Carolina’s Marcus Paige made an epic three point shot to tie the game and force what everyone thought would be an overtime square off.

But it wasn’t to be.

As the last tenths of a second ticked away Villanova’s Kris Jenkins shot a game winning three pointer destroying hopes and dreams of a UNC victory.

Going from the ultimate college basketball high to the ultimate low I watched my favorite players leave the court looking stunned, distraught, and dejected; my feelings, tumultuous as they were, surely only a fraction of what they were feeling.

To say the least it was heartbreaking.

Now I know the world of college basketball and all that transpires in the throws of March Madness is small cookies compared to the battles taking place in the real world. It’s a micro issue, respectively, but even still it stirs the hearts of those invested. I know it rattled mine.

And if nothing else, it has served this week as a reminder to me of a truth that matters in all of life’s battles both big and small:

Those who love deeply, hurt deeply. 

 

It happens all the time, the temptation to save your skin and your heart from pain. To check out, give up, ignore, don’t look, don’t touch, don’t feel. Don’t listen, don’t see, invest, get involved. Don’t go deeper. Don’t be real. And for heaven’s sake don’t let yourself be vulnerable. Because pain is always involved when you give your heart away. 

All day Monday I fought a subtle urge to not even watch the game. If they lose, I thought, I don’t want to see it. The disappointment that would cause the players…Coach Roy…me… would just be too unbearable.

But that game? That game! And, yeah, I got burned in the end…But how could I miss that game? 

When you find yourself hurting deeply, take heart! It means you loved deeply. And what has the Savior shown us about life but that loving deeply is the only way to really and truly live? 

All the things we love, the big and the small, it matters! It matters to Him. It matters to the story of your life.

When you start to get that feeling, that temptation to stop right there, to go no further, to look away, stop and think for a minute. Don’t just think about what you want to avoid, imagine what you’ll miss by shutting down your heart:

That relationship

That sunrise

That victory

That wholeness

That health

That smile

Laughter

Kisses

Welcome home hugs

Knowing what you’re made of

Knowing what He’s made of

Knowing what forgiveness feels like 

A life with as few regrets as possible

For all my Carolina dreams of winning the national championship, for all life’s battles both big and small, for all the deeply hurting, perhaps Garth Brooks said it best in the words of his classic song: 

“And now

I”m glad I didn’t know

The way it all would end

The way it all would go

Our lives

Are better left to chance

I could have missed the pain

But I’d have had to miss

The dance” *

Lean in. Invest. Be open. Stay open. Stay. In. The. Pool. Be you. Be real. Give your heart away. Give your heart to Him.

And whatever you, no matter what, don’t abandon the big dance for the sake of all the madness.

No, grab your Cinderella slippers and linger after midnight.

*Lyrics from The Dance by Tony Arata

When You Find Yourself Walking a Broken Road

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Winter 10The snow? It just kept falling all big and heavy and white. And we? We just kept laughing and dancing and shaking our heads that this beauty, this land could be ours.

Thirteen years (18 if you count the dating, doe-eyed, dreaming ones), three states, three major moves, four apartments, one rental house, two months that turned into seven years living with mom and dad, five employers, three children, and one self-started business led us to this.  

To a real life winter wonderland and a place to call our own.

Winter 4 Winter 7 Winter 8 As I held my baby close watching snowflakes melt on her cheeks. As little girls laughed and dug their hands in mounds of snowy white. As husband snapped photos of tears in my eyes and I craned my head back to catch flakes on my nose and eye lashes.

As we all stood for this slice of time and wonder, wonderstruck by the beauty of this first snow of the season, by the beginning of this season in which we leave one home and create another all I could think was: this...

He knew it would come to this. This is what He had in store, set aside, waiting, planned, created for us.

The jobs, the moves, the states, the dwellings some of them, many of them, broke our hearts. But now we see how He worked it for good.  How He made a broken road and blessed it to bless us.

Winter 9Winter 13Winter 12There’s a country song that says it: “that God blessed the broken road that led me straight to you.”*

And He did. He has. He will continue to.

He takes the broken, the lost, the forgotten, and makes it new. Makes it good. 

New, as snow on evergreen branches.

Good, as the feeling of home.

*”Bless the Broken Road” Lyrics by Bobby Boyd, Jeff Hanna, Robert E. Boyd, Marcus Hummon

 

Today Was A Fairy Tale

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IMG_2116Once upon a time there was a princess and her King Papa…

 “One splendid sunshiny day, about an hour after noon, Irene, who was playing on a lawn in the garden, heard the distant blast of a bugle. She jumped up with a cry of joy, for she knew by that particular blast that her father was on his way to see her. This part of the garden lay on the slope of the hill and allowed a full view of the country below. So she shaded her eyes with her hand and looked far away to catch the first glimpse of shining armor. In a few moments a little troop came glittering round the shoulder of a hill. Spears and helmets were sparkling and gleaming, banners were flying, horses prancing, and again came the bugle-blast which was to her like the voice of her father calling across the distance: ‘Irene, I’m coming.’ On and on they came until she could clearly distinguish the king. He rode a white horse and was taller than any of the men with him. He wore a narrow circle of gold set with jewels around his helmet, and as he came still nearer Irene could discern the flashing of the stones in the sun. It was a long time since he had been to see her, and her little heart beat faster and faster as the shining troop approached, for she loved her king-papa very dearly and was nowhere so happy as in his arms. When they reached a certain point, after which she could see them no more from the garden, she ran to the gate, and there stood till up they came clanging and stamping with one more bright bugle-blast which said: ‘Irene, I am come.’

By this time the people of the house were all gathered at the gate, but Irene stood alone in front of them. When the horsemen pulled up she ran to the side of the white horse and held up he arms. The king stooped and took her hands. In an instant she was on the saddle and clasped in his great strong arms. I wish I could describe the king so that you could see him in your mind. He had gentle blue eyes, but a nose that made him look like an eagle. A long dark beard, streaked with silvery lines, flowed from his mouth almost to his waist, and as Irene sat on the saddle and hid her glad face upon his bosom it mingled with the golden hair which her mother had given her, and the two together were like a cloud with streaks of the sun woven through it. After he had held her to his heart for a minute he spoke to his white horse, and the great beautiful creature, walked as gently as a lady — for he knew he had a little lady on his back — through the gate and up to the door of the house. Then the king set her on the ground and, dismounting, took her hand and walked with her into the great hall, which was hardly ever entered except when he came to see his little princess.” (From The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald)

 

When I was a little girl my daddy traveled a lot for work. But when he came home, always with kisses, always with hugs, I felt a delight like none other. My king-papa had come.

When first I read this passage from The Princess and the Goblin these childhood memories came to mind, but what also came to mind was a picture of the father-daughter relationship I share with God.

I know Father’s Day can be hard. As I type this post I can think of three close friends who have recently lost their dads. I also know friends who grew up without a dad and those who struggle beneath the burden of a strained and broken relationship with a dad who was supposed to love them, a dad who was supposed to be so much more.

My heart breaks for the hearts that break whenever Father’s Day rolls around, and while I can’t relate from a level of personal experience, perhaps I can offer some hope.

We all, like Princess Irene, have a King-Papa who longs to pull us close, who longs to come for us, who longs to fill and heal the gap left by death, destruction, and broken relationships.

As the princess delighted in her papa, so we can delight in Him. Because He loves us. Oh, how He loves us.

Brave Prince, Lovely Princess, may you wake up this day to the fairytale found in God, your King-Papa. In the pain and brokenness of this world’s relationships may you know His fatherly love and find yourself clasped in His great strong arms.