For no apparent reason, Etta Rose looked up from her toys and said, God has a plan!

Before I could respond, Selah called out, And we are always living it!

And then Heaven slammed shut again, as if nothing had just happened.

I think it’s partly true, but that’s how the week started, one that’s left me in quiet vigil, listening for invitations to pray for my First Friend and her family.

It’s been a year today since she sat with her one mother and prayed over her, releasing her into Eternity if she wanted to go.

Within minutes of her prayer my phone shuddered with the words, She’s gone.

I held those words in my hand, the only way I knew how to hold my Friend’s hand in that moment.

Mrs. Jean had been leaving for a while, mostly a week, like a star that still gives light long after it’s become something else.

The whole universe helps us tell our story this way, helping us understand it.

I watched my Friend and her daddy, Jo and Joe, lean into this storm like centurions, enduring and guarding their most sacred treasure.

So it’s been a year now, and this week has been filled with Mrs. Jean.

Maybe every week is and I’ve only just noticed her hellos because this week feels raw.

But these are gifts from Heaven to those willing to see, so I’ll share them with you.

~

Monday marked a year since I said goodbye to her.

I got to give her water. I got to hold her hand and lay it soft and weightless back on her butterfly blanket.

Butterflies are her hallmark.

Once when I was standing in an airport terminal she called me and said, I just want to be like a butterfly, to become something else, something so beautiful, and fly away.

So Monday I flopped my Bible open. It’s full of letters, but this random page was marked with a letter from Joe, Mrs. Jean’s husband.

I smiled at the serendipity and grabbed a thick fist of pages and turned to the back of the Book, another random page…

This one was marked with a letter from JoAnn.

It seemed God wanted me to write each of them a letter, so I did. Joe first.

That’s when serendipity gave way to a parade of God-winks.

~

The only greeting cards left in my desk were ones bought for me by JoAnn, two years earlier.

They have butterflies on them.

I wanted to include a Scripture in my letter to Joe, and when nothing came to mind I simply wrote, God is love. 1 John 4:8.

I had very few stamps left, but one of them—only one—was a red cardinal, the feathered saint rumored to appear when our loved ones in Heaven think of us, or come near.

I pressed it to Joe’s envelope.

Yesterday I noticed on my nightstand the porcelain jewelry box JoAnn gave me after Jean passed away.

Passed away seems so awkward and incorrect.

Passed across.

Passed through.

I had forgotten the top of it reads, Love comes from God. 1 John 4:7—the trail of words right before the verse I’d mailed to her husband days earlier.

~

So many times Mrs. Jean went first. She powerfully encouraged me when she had cancer, before I ever dreamed I had cancer too.

And when she slipped off into heaven, I blocked out thoughts of ever having to be without my mama, but I’ll have stood in that holy place alongside JoAnn with Jean, because she went first, whispering to us about where she intends to wait.

And the little verse I wrote to Joe, the one on Jean’s jewelry box came right before it.

Surely these small things are God.

These are the atoms of life, micro-proofs of God’s love, His Presence, and the presence of an endless near world untouchable and un-destroyable, a mere breath away.

We’d be fools to say in our hearts, There is no God.

~

Later in the afternoon I put my hand in my coat pocket and felt something.

Incredibly, it’s the little card JoAnn gave everyone who attended Jean’s life celebration last February.

It’s something Jean used to give to everyone with her favorite saying on it: God is good all the time, and He has a plan.

JoAnn had them made for her because she said it so often.

I’d slipped it in my pocket at the memorial and haven’t worn this coat again since then.

Here I find it, one year later, and it contains the same words my girls were calling to each other when this week began, God has a plan.

A plan to take the tragic and make it into something else, something weaved so tightly into the threads of our lives, we’ll miss it if we’re not paying attention.

~

When I sat down to write these things to you, I noticed a piece of paper one of my daughters left out of her backpack.

It’s an assignment about butterflies.

Hello, Mrs. Jean, I finally said aloud.

The paper reads: Butterflies are very important in nature because they pollinate plants, which helps the plants to make seeds.

Life can be a real chrysalis, hardening around us in terrible ways to protect our tender spirits, and sometimes it’s ugly.

But Mrs. Jean the Butterfly pollinated in faith, and I am one of her plants, and these words to you are my seeds.

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Let your gentle spirit be obvious to everyone.

The Lord is very near.

~ Philippians 4:5

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http://www.sallyannewrites.com/?s=counting+butterflies 

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