now what.
I'm not sure how to write this. The emails we've been getting and the administration has been saying that we "lost a member of our community" on Saturday when Ethan Roser was killed in a tragic accident at the track meet. We lost him, I guess. That feels so polite to me. Like he's wandered off and he'll come back. Which, I guess, in an eschatological sense is true, but I don't want to hear about that right now.
Grief is a hard thing. And there are million and one writings about grief so this won't be much different, but, like many of those writings, this is how I process grief.
I love Jesus. I'm a faithful follower of Him and I am certain of the eternal hope we have in Him. But right now? I'm angry. God will redeem this situation in time and use it for His glory, but I have to confess -- I don't think God's glory is worth the life of this kid. And I know, head-knowledge-wise, that it is, that God will and should receive glory from all of our situations, but why this one? How could any of the good that stems from this tragedy total to something greater than his life?
We are so fallen. This world is so fallen. I've experienced grief before, but never to this personal and senseless a degree. Never to the sense where I want to fight God over His goodness and choices. I don't really care how we'll grow as a campus because of this -- I want Ethan back. I don't want to close the gap where he was, I want Ethan back. I didn't even know Ethan, never heard of the guy until he was gone. And we talked in chapel today about how the Christian life is ordinary and so was Ethan's life and that's good and holy, but I want Ethan back.
It's kind of like that tree that got struck by lightening just a few days before: sudden and dreadful and removing something some of us didn't even know was there.
We should've known. And by that I mean I should've known.
So now what? I guess we keep praising, trusting that God's faithfulness continues through hardship like this, and also letting the hardship be what it is. Grief is hard. And that's ok, I guess.
