Maybe There's A Loving God

Sara Groves

This song reminds me of where I was at developmentally/spiritually from about 4th grade through 6th or 7th grade. The song talks about “lying on my back in the middle of a field.” Well, for me, it was more like, “lying on my back high up in a tree.” When I hear this song a picture comes to my mind of our house in Albuquerque, NM and I am in the backyard having climbed either the big oak tree or the apple tree and it is evening time. The stars are just starting to come out, but there is still some light in the sky and I am staring up at the sky just content to be in my own little world. Even when confined to the ventilator (when, for example, my pacers would break), I would still find a way to climb up those trees. My parents actually have a picture of me laying in the apple tree, the ventilator tubing traveling up the tree trunk, my machine sitting on the ground below me, I’m engulfed reading a book, and our family Labrador retriever, Bobbie (R.I. P. 2001), is right below me happily looking at the camera. I was in a very contemplative state then and was very much caught up in my own world, which included having imaginary friends. I tended to be very spaced out most of the time, and I remember more than once my mother becoming frustrated with my detached behavior. Paying attention in class tended to be a struggle, and along with that came a struggle with grades as well. For this reason, the second stanza in the song starting with “I have another meeting today…”, rings very true. Spiritually I was content in believing what my parents had taught me to believe and didn’t spend much time questioning it or pondering it, though as I grew older I began to try to explore and to understand what it was all supposed to mean to me.

I’m trying to work things out, I’m trying to comprehend
Am I the chance result of some great accident?
I hear a rhythm call me, the echo of a grand design
I spend all night in the backyard
Staring up at the stars in the sky

I have another meeting today with my new counselor
My mom will cry and say, “I don’t know what to do with her.
She’s so unresponsive, I just cannot break through.
She spends all night in the backyard
Staring up at the stars and the moon.”

They have a chart and graph of my despondency
They want to chart a path for self-recovery
They want to know what I’m thinking, what motivates my mood
To spend all night in the backyard
Staring up at the stars and the moon

Maybe this was made for me
For lying on my back in the middle of a field
Maybe that’s a selfish thought
Or maybe there’s a loving God

Maybe I was made this way
To think and reason and question and pray
And I have never prayed a lot

But maybe there’s a loving God