One of the benefits of having attended a small school like Whitworth is the relationships I was able to form with professors. One of those persons was Jerry Sittser, my religion professor, mentor and friend. My favorite memory is Jerry was the year or two that he spent sitting on the Chapel carpet, eating brown-bag lunches with myself and a group of guys as we talked about girls, God and whatever was going on in our lives. I loved those conversations.
After re-reading Jerry’s book, “A Grace Disguised,” I realized that I wanted to talk with him. So I called him up and we had a nice conversation. He was helpful in that he didn’t try to offer any theological explanation for what had happened, didn’t try to offer any advice or platitudes. He just said, “I have no words. This is horrible. And I’m here for you.”
As he was sharing some about his own experience of grief (again, for those who don’t know, he lost his youngest daughter, wife and mother in a car accident one evening), he shared with me something that stuck with me. He said, “I remember a few weeks after the accident seeing that the grass was still growing. It hadn’t stopped for me. I was so mad that the grass just kept growing.”
When one suffers a deep loss, the world seems to stand still. Time doesn’t feel like time ever has before. When I think back to those 30+ hours we spent in the Labor & Delivery floor of the Walnut Creek hospital, it still feels like it was just an out-of-body experience. It doesn’t feel like it was something that actually was happening to us. And yet it did. And while the news probably caught so many people off-guard, and while it probably caused them to pause, to say a prayer, to think about us and Micah and Judah, their lives carried on.
The grass continued to grow.
As much as I would have liked everyone else’s lives to just come to stand-still, that wasn’t going to happen. As much as I wished that everyone would be able to feel exactly what Sarah and I were feeling, what we were thinking, that wasn’t going to happen. As much as I wanted a break from everything…life continued on. Youth group still needed to happen. Groceries still need to be bought, the trash still needed to be taken out, and quite literally, the grass continued to grow and our lawn needed to be mowed.
I know the world wasn’t going to stop just because we had suffered a loss – but still, it feels like it should have. At least for awhile. Things should have stopped, or at least slowed down for a bit. But that’s not how the world works. And to be honest, that’s not how I’ve operated in the past. I’ve been on the other end of hearing tragic news from friends, and while I do what I can and let them know I’m here for them, I’ve still had papers due, bills to pay, items to check off of my todo list. And my world didn’t stop – even though a friend’s world came to a screeching halt.
The Weepies, a band I’ve seen a couple times perform and really love, have a song called “The World Spins Madly On.” I just thought of it, and it seems to deal with this idea pretty well. The lyrics are below, and you can also listen to it in the YouTube video below.
And so Jerry came home, and had to figure out how to re-organize his home and care for his 3 other children who survived the accident. And we came home, and had to figure out what life was going to look like now. And while we would have liked to fight it, and while it took a long time before the realization of everything really hit us, the world kept on spinning. And the grass continued to grow…
World Spins Madly On • The Weepies, “Say I Am You”
Woke up and wished that I was dead
With an aching in my head
I lay motionless in bed
I thought of you and where you’d gone
and let the world spin madly onEverything that I said I’d do
Like make the world brand new
And take the time for you
I just got lost and slept right through the dawn
And the world spins madly onI let the day go by
I always say goodbye
I watch the stars from my window sill
The whole world is moving and I’m standing stillWoke up and wished that I was dead
With an aching in my head
I lay motionless in bed
The night is here and the day is gone
And the world spins madly onI thought of you and where you’d gone
And the world spins madly on.
On a day like today, in a job such as mine, I can relate to the continued spinning madness of the world. Probably not in the most helpful way for you and most definately not in the same way. Madness nonetheless.
Continuing to send you thoughts and prayers in your madness…
Adam-
My lesson last night for my Sr. High group was on grief and loss and I was thinking through it I was reminder of how helpful this post was when I read it over a year ago. I shared the idea with my kids last night coupled with the quote from Annie “The sun’ll come out tomorrow…”
Congrats on your new boy!