Learned Lesson Number Twenty-Seven: Understanding the Gravity of The Situation

Gravity has been in my face lately. And I don't just mean showing there. Although it definitely is doing that. But it has also been on my mind. In fact, I have been trying to write this post on gravity for months, and have not been able to complete it. Today I will, even though this powerful force I am attempting to write about is working very hard on me, making me not want to move at all. In fact, it is because this force is working on me that I will finish this message. For gravity to be a power for good, you have to know how and when to resist it. Not defy it, mind you. Sometimes you hear of gymnasts or other athletes having “defied gravity,” but this is not accurate. They have just gotten very skilled at properly resisting it. Writing this post today, when I don’t feel like doing anything, is me resisting it on only the most basic level; moving my fingers, and hopefully my brain. And not necessarily in that order.

This past Monday was not a good day for me. In addition to having a wicked cold and dealing with some personal stress, a terrible thing happened in Boston, and it affected me profoundly, as it surely did everyone who watched it unfold. Someone planted bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The final toll of human damage has not even been assessed, and maybe never will be, really. Because the injured and grieving will be dealing with the permanent, personal, and private aftermath for years to come. But what does this have to do with gravity? Bear with me.

There are a few reasons this particular tragedy affected me the way it did, beyond the obvious. One is that I have walked the street where this took place, and it is a sentimental memory for me. It was about 12 years ago, on Thanksgiving weekend, and I had flown out to spend the weekend with my husband, who was working in Boston at the time. We literally spent the weekend walking the city, and it was a kind of other-worldly experience for me. It was possibly the best weekend of my 23-year marriage. It was snowing much of the time, but not terribly cold, and we visited some unbelievably gorgeous cathedrals, and the surprisingly small, but tangibly sacred Granary Graveyard, (pictured below) which is nestled in between some older buildings, and is the final earthly resting place of folks like John Adams, Paul Revere, much of Ben Franklin’s family, and Mother Goose. (Yup, she’s real.)

I found this place to be inspiring. As if many of those souls might have been present while I was there, and I felt the profound depth of their sacrifices and contributions for the benefit of my priceless freedom. As I looked at the above photo, I found myself back there, lingering, wanting to read every single headstone, and the thought struck me that a graveyard is the place where we settle our final tab with gravity. In fact, the words “grave” and “gravity” are related, and can both be used to describe the seriousness (or weightiness) of a situation. If it is gravity’s purpose to keep us from floating off the planet before our test here is complete, it is also gravity that reclaims our physical bodies as part of the Earth again. I find some comfort in that. And I have a soft spot in my heart for Boston because of my experience there.

Another reason for the situation in Boston having affected me deeply is that I have wanted to complete a marathon for years, and I have started and stopped the training process many times. I have paid entry fees for events I never made it to. Not as a runner, but as a walker. With hopes that after having gotten rid of some significant weight, I might someday attempt running again. This dynamic has much to do with my own personal lifelong dance with gravity. (Which currently feels like a really slow waltz.) Every step that any of us take, walking or running, is an exercise in resisting gravity. From the time we take that first tentative step as infants. The more we resist gravity, the stronger and more balanced we become; the less we resist it, the weaker and less balanced we become. Lately, I have felt rather weak, and slightly unbalanced.

Marathon runners are very, very good at resisting gravity, and therefore strong, and I have great respect for that. The Boston Marathon requires a qualifying time, so is a somewhat stratospheric dream for me. But I know people who have done it, and I have many friends and family members who have completed other marathons. The photo at the top of this page is of my sister, Melinda, when she was in Moab, Utah last month to complete the Canyonlands Half Marathon. I thought it was a perfect photo for this blog, so she gave me permission to use it. I myself entered the inaugural Valley of the Sun Half Marathon, way back in 2002, somewhat spontaneously. I was walking 5-7 miles daily at the time, but had not gone farther than that in one stretch since I was a teenager. My goal was to just finish, and to try and maintain my 3.5-4mph pace to the end. I achieved this goal, finishing in 3 hours and 33 minutes. My brother, who had run it and finished long before me, drove back out onto the course with my niece and nephew to cheer me on toward the end. This meant a lot to me, and helped me keep going. I was ready to crumple at mile 9 and I lost a toenail in the process, but crossing that finish line was one of the more exhilarating moments of my life. So endurance runners and the people who cheer for them have a special place in my heart, and watching the footage of what happened at that Boston finish line was really heartbreaking for me.

The news site I was on kept repeating video of the initial blast on a loop, and there was one elderly runner who collapsed at the force of the blast, whose legs just looked like rubber when he went down. He was ok, just scraped up a bit, but people mere feet from him were not. I later learned he was from Everett, Washington, where I used to live, and where one of my children was born. He was 78 and it was his 3^rd marathon. Watching this image repeat reminded me of one recent morning when I got out of bed and was taken to the ground almost immediately by the charley-horse from HELL in my calf. Yes, I did say hell, and capitalize it, even, because it hurt that bad. It was like somebody stabbed me in the leg with an ice pick. Between trying not to spill the cup of water in my hand and collapsing from the pain, I had zero defense against the powers that be. Gravity was free to face-plant me into the carpet without any interference on my part. In hindsight, I maybe should have let the water spill, but regardless, gravity and I were not friends that morning.

When pain or other forces hit you when your resistance is down, gravity will take you to the ground. A favorite Disney movie in my family is “The Sword in the Stone.” There is a scene where the young Arthur is bounding through the woods and asks the aging Merlin what gravity is. Merlin answers that gravity is what makes you fall down. Says Arthur, “You mean, like a stumble, or a trip?” “No,” replies Merlin, “it's the force that pulls you downward.”

Like many other seemingly obvious things in life, as I get older, the basic principles I ignored in science class begin to interest me profoundly. Usually when I start to see their real-world application to me. As I have been ruminating on gravity, I have realized that it does not always show its force suddenly and painfully; more often, it is the result of its steady and constant force over time that we see manifested in our lives.

For those of us who have passed the 50-yard line of life, and/or are dealing with excess weight on our bodies, seeing and feeling the more long-term effects of gravity on our physical selves can be almost more painful than being knocked to the ground. But we learn to live with it. We spend our entire lives moving in opposition to this powerful force, without even thinking about it, while at the same time being kept from drifting away by it. We have to resist it in order to move at all, but we cannot defy it, as much as we sometimes wish we could. It is one of those irrevocable God-given laws that protect us when we respect it, and can destroy us when we don’t. What an amazingly powerful balancing factor, and part of the great refining fire that is life on this planet. Those who try to defy gravity usually don’t survive. But those who respectfully and consistently resist it benefit immensely and are strengthened from within.

I read that the 78-year-old marathoner from Everett, Washington got up off the ground after being treated by medical personnel, and covered the remaining few yards to the finish line. And that several other marathoners continued on to local hospitals to donate blood for the victims. And countless other people got up and ran toward the chaos to assist the fallen in any way they could. They understood the gravity of the situation and they took action. And that is the kind of resistance that God intended.