Eclectic Amateur

Here is something I wrote in the immediate aftermath:

An Ordinary Week

(looking back on September 11, 2001)


Thank you, God, for an ordinary week.


While there were reports of terror and death
  all around me, you have given me the gift
  of an ordinary week.


I went to work and did my job.  There was satisfaction
  and frustration and politics and camaraderie.

I came home to my family.  Some joy, some tedium,
  some being driven crazy by each other.  You know
  how families can be.

I helped with the dishes, did some work around
  the house, folded the laundry.

The kids, in between being wonderful, challenged
  and frustrated us.  They even needed
  some disciplining.

I wondered how I was going to get all the bills
  taken care of.

My wife smiled at me.

We fought a little bit, but nothing that didn't
  pass and leave the love behind.

I went to church on Sunday and worshiped,
  distracted by the squirming and questioning
  of lively children.

It was an ordinary week.

We had a little bit out of the ordinary.  Josh
  was upset because we didn't get a newspaper.
  He likes the weather maps.

But the front page wouldn't have been ordinary,
  and he's such a sensitive child.

He won't even pray his "special prayers" at night,
  because he didn't want to speak what he'd heard
  about New York and Washington, D.C.
  even to God.

David will pray about it.  He prays every night
  for the airplanes and the buildings and the firefighters
  and that the planes will get down safely.
  I never have the heart to tell him
  that they won't.

My wife and I are in disbelief, and a little shock,
  that a building where we spent a week together
  is now a pile of rubble.

We hold each other a little tighter.

And we were relieved to find that our friend
  who lives and works around the Beltway
  had his flight on the ground a few hours
  before the terror began.

So it was not entirely ordinary.

But I am only an ordinary man
  with the ordinary responsibilities of life.

I had no terror of waiting for the awful call
  (or worse, no call at all)
  regarding loved ones in the wrong building.

I had no responsibility for coworkers in flight
  or where they might be stranded
  if the planes were still in the air at all.

I had no position of ministry
  where the grieving and questioning would come
  and ask the unanswerable.

I had no position of public office
  where more wisdom than can be humanly borne
  is demanded.

I am only an ordinary man
  experiencing an ordinary week.

Thank you, Lord, for this most precious treasure
  of an ordinary week.