One
evening in 2001, about 11:30pm, I went to bed as usual, tired,
ready to sleep. As I lay in bed, in the quietness, I thought about my 86
year old
father in the nursing home.
I thought about my recent editing of a video of my parent's 50th
wedding anniversary. During the program at our home church,
my brother asked the family and friends gathered if anyone had anything to say about knowing
my parents. Since several
had spoken before, there was a long pause. He asked again, "Is there anyone else?" My father jumped
up and said, "If nobody wants to talk, I will!" After a short chuckle
from everyone, he proceeded to give his testimony and how God led his life through the Word.
Since my father had dementia and it was difficult to know what
he remembered from one minute to the next, I wondered if
he remembered that day and his
faith. I had played that portion of the videotape to him several weeks before and did not get much of a response.
Anyway, while lying in bed that night, I prayed to God to
strengthen and sustain my father's faith in these
end times of his life. I also asked God for a sign that my father still believed and understood God's
promise for his eternal life. I
did not expect an immediate answer, but thought that I would look for some sign
when I next saw my father.
By this point, it was almost midnight, but I was no longer sleepy.
I figured that I might as well get up for a
while longer and went up to the living room and switched on the TV. Flipping through the channels, I
came across a commercial where
a
supermodel had a butterfly sitting
on her forehead, flapping his wings. Weird, I thought as I flipped onward.
I flipped to channel 20, KPXM-PAX, which was airing a Christian TV
show named Worship.
This show had beautiful nature scenes,
Christian music, Bible verses and intermittent dialogs. Within a few
minutes of its start at midnight, the host
came on and gave a short devotional,
one part of which spoke direct to me. He gave an illustration from a book titled: "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly".
Another butterfly! I had to check this book out further, certainly with
such a strange title.
I flipped open my laptop which was always connected to the Internet
and did a search on "diving bell
butterfly" and immediately pulled up several book reviews. The next day my wife found the book at the
library for me to read.
The book was written by an editor of a French magazine named Elle
(supermodel reference?). Jean-Dominique Bauby had a massive stroke in his
brainstem in 1995. He was left
in a coma and when he came out of it, he was almost completely paralyzed, in a state called LIS (Locked in
Syndrome). In the past people did not live through this, but today with life support systems, they
do
for a while. When he woke, he
only could see and hear out of his left eye and ear. The only thing he could move was to twitch his left
eyelid. Using this movement and
help from friends, he actually dictated this book over about a year's
time and died two days after it's
publication. Unfortunately, I don't think he was a Christian.
The book was about his final days locked in what he calls a diving
bell. The 29 chapters and 130 pages
alternate between his real life experience in the hospital, coping with his situation, and a dream state
where he can flit like a
butterfly, traveling the world through his memories.
Possibly, this is what my father was experiencing. He was confined
in
a nursing home, a wheelchair, and dependent on other's
for just about everything. He
also flitted like a butterfly through his memories, often talking about
something from the far past while not
remembering the most recent discussions.
I don't think that the "Butterfly" revelation that Monday
night was just a coincidence. It was an answer
from God to help me understand my father's situation. What kind of a story would my father
tell? You can be assured that
he would want to "talk" about his faith if he could.
As a reinforcement of the message, a week later, on my birthday,
I received
a “Memo from God”. Actually, this
was in the form of an email from a Christian friend with a link to a web page,
labeled "Memo from God". The
web page had another butterfly, flapping its wings. (The original web
(updated 11/21/04)