Boston Marathon’s Aftermath

By Katherine Devorak [GUEST POST]

My sister stretched her pudgy little fingers against my cheek. We both snuggled in my big girl bed counting the minutes until Dad came to tell us it was “really” bedtime. As a six year old, I was not always happy to have an adorable redheaded attention-monopolizing two year-old sister. But at twenty-five, I have come to think of her as the dearest thing to me on this green earth.

My sister lives in Boston. Moments before she called me today, I stood waiting for the door to my workplace to open and I prayed that God would teach me how to live in thankfulness. With a lot of very stressful and seemingly important ongoing events in my life, I had reasons to be unhappy.  That is why I prayed that God would help me to live in thankfulness. I didn’t think I could do it on my own.

“I’m okay,” my sister said to me over the phone. And then she told me what happened. An explosion just outside of the hotel in Copley Square erupted as the first wave of the Boston Marathon runners crossed the line. The blast instantly killed three people, wounding more than one hundred, and within seconds changing the fate of families and friends across America.

My sister lives about a mile and a half from Copley Square, the scene of the explosion. Her college campus is home to a section of the course of the marathon. Overcome with timely errands, she did not go to the marathon today, thereby very possibly saving her life.

It may have happened to you before today–the realization that we have so much to be grateful for–but for me, it sunk in hard today. It pressed down on my heart like a weight, causing me to cry on both trains I take home from work.

In the few hours on the train home from work, I continued to hear from loved ones who live in Boston.  They were all grief-stricken, but able to hold the phone and speak clearly enough to tell me they were all right. I cannot say the same for the friends of my fellow coworkers, family, and neighbors. I have friends who still have not heard from their loved ones. They are uncertain, still, if they are one of the runners who lost a limb or were wounded in another way.

We were all wounded in one way. Though our hearts are stunned with just a sliver of grief in comparison with others who lost their loved ones, we hurt for those who are hurting.

When things like this happen, I told my mom, “it seems like senseless and pointless grief.” And it does. There exists no discernible reason for what happened today in Boston. What does exist is a call to pray for the loss and suffering of every family and friend who lost a loved one today, or heard the news of their injury.

Though it seems like such a small offering in an ocean of suffering, join me today in lifting up in prayer those who have lost much today. The verse that God has been giving me lately is, “do not mourn like those who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). For the Christian, this is key.

Today, God reminded me through a horrible, senseless, catastrophic event that I have so much to be grateful for every day.

It is my prayer that we who were not directly affected would be of use to those who were. May we make ours a shoulder to cry on, and our hands folded ever fixedly in prayer for comfort, hope, and in God’s good time, healing. 

Katherine is my dear friend and college roommate. She is a freelance journalist who has been published in World-New York Online Magazine and national Australian and Papua New Guinean magazines and newspapers.