The Grace of Our Story

In the early 2000s when I began to research Grace, I came across a book called: A Grace Disguised: How the soul grows through loss (1996). I was so touched by the book, I wrote the author, Gerald L. Sittser (presently a professor of Theology at Whitworth College in Spokane, WA), to express my appreciation for sharing his story. Sittser’s story involved his wife and four small children and his mother, named Grace. As they set out on a weekend journey in the Cascade Mountains some 20-plus years ago now, they were hit by a drunken driver – at that moment, he lost three generations of women – “my mother, my wife, and my daughter.” He and his remaining three children also sustained multiple injuries.

What I remember most from his book was what he called the “existential darkness” that came upon him when he saw the three open coffins at the funeral home and how he found himself in a “waking dream” – running after the setting sun, becoming exhausted, realizing the sun was out of his grasp; looking back eastward, seeing only a “vast darkness closing in.” When he shared his dream with others, his sister told him: “the quickest way for anyone to reach the sun and the light of day is not to run west, chasing after the setting sun, but to head east, plunging into the darkness, until one comes to the sunrise.”

Ironically, while I was reading this book, I was also reading the Bible from cover to cover for the first time. After reading the Book of Job, I remember thinking to myself I don’t get it. Within a couple days, as I was reading Sittser’s book, he explained how two Biblical stories helped him through his ordeal, the story of Joseph and the story of Job. He fully explained the Book of Job! What a gift of grace.

Now, fast forward to the present when I learned Gerald Sittser has since written a number of books, one entitled: A Grace Revealed: How God redeems the story of your life (2012). In this book, he asks: “How can we trust God is involved in our story when our circumstances seem to say He isn’t?” He then explains how his family’s story is brought “full circle, revealing God’s redeeming work in the midst of circumstances that could easily have destroyed them.” He also shared other life stories in his book and showed how God redeemed those stories. He invites us to read this book with our own story in mind.

There are so many poignant moments in his book. Sittser and his children love the outdoors and he speaks of how they hike in the Canadian Rockies and note the many pine trees along the way and remark about the beauty of their stature: “not beautiful like a child’s innocent and delicate face, but beautiful like the carved and aged face of a lifelong fisherman or farmer…full of character.” He also spoke of how it was his tradition to find a new calendar each year with pictures of beauty and nature on them and how this calendar hung on the pantry door in their kitchen – a place of gathering and a place where all could keep their plans written together. One picture truly caught their attention, so they eventually set out to find it along the California coast – he expressed how the beauty of the actual site was “so much better” than the picture they so loved. Sittser has recently married, his children are now grown and married and he has a grandchild and two stepdaughters. His story is carved deeply with loss and grief, with beauty, love and grace, A Grace Revealed.

Sittser sees those trees he referred to as symbolizing what God wants for us. “He wants to use the harsh conditions of life to shape us – and eventually the whole world – into something extraordinarily beautiful. Once broken, we become whole again; once selfish and insecure, we become stately and serene and self-giving….”