Today marks two months that Mike, my husband and father to our children, passed. Like a goose stepping march, the days and weeks and now months, advance, without pause. How peculiar time feels: some time is like a whirlwind, lived and gone before I can even call it a day while other time slogs its way through the sun’s ecliptic journey.
Don’t let it escape your notice, dear friends, that with the Lord a single day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a single day. The Lord isn’t slow to keep his promise, as some think of slowness, but he is patient toward you, not wanting anyone to perish but all to change their hearts and lives. [2 Peter 3:8-9, CEB]
Some say that grieving cannot be measured by time, it is different for everyone, and yet, the two month mark has precedence, a turning point of sorts for most survivors of loss where they begin a true re-entry. I suppose I beat that mark to some degree. Not for lack of love or care, but merely the unassailable demands of food, shelter, and clothing.
I remember many years ago when I was living single in New York City, a struggling actress, making do with restaurant jobs and occasional paid gigs, and a dream of dance/theater company that could make a difference. But, in the end, the personalities of the players were incompatible and we needed to part ways, not unlike a messy divorce. During that time, I told them of feeling overwhelmed and just plain tired of being in one of the driver’s seats and footing the bills. And one friend said, “You can’t fall apart. We count on you too much.” And so, I ran away. I left the City and the group and started over in the Midwest.
Starting over is time-based. It’s a resetting of the clock; it’s restarting the stopwatch.
Every day is actually a new countdown. It’s the measure we humans have all agreed upon. And then, a few specific days make their mark and become an inauguration of a longer period of time, a month or a year, or, as in my case today, a simple reminder of a finale, that other day when the clock stopped for the Mike part of my heart and would not begin again.
But God’s clock is not linear. I’m not exactly sure what that means for me, except for an unfailing Presence that is not put off by my lateness or my laziness, does not measure me by my effectiveness or my falls, does not count my mistakes or my successes. God is now and God is now again. And Jesus, who lived linearly for a human lifetime, is once again now, and identifies experientially with the pain of time.
Two months. 62 days. 1,488 hours. 89,280 minutes. 5,356,800 seconds. plus now. No algorithm for that.
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I remember a story about a woman who loved this psalm in particular and memorized it but when the time came, when she was grabbed by a man who wanted to hurt her, all she could think of and imagine were the feathers of God as a great bird protecting her young. And so this woman cried out, “feathers, feathers, feathers.” But God knew and the man, inexplicably, let her go, almost as though a force field was drawn about her.
Meditations from Zion 