reflecting on September 11, 2009

Growing up my Grandma always told me how she’d forever remember what she was doing and where she was the day President Kennedy was shot. Likewise I think this is the similar situation we encounter with my generation – we will all forever remember where we were September 11, 2001 – busy at work in our middle school classrooms – and what we were doing, the day our country was attacked by terrorists. I had been in New York City just a month prior to the attacks with my dance school – catching a Broadway performance, touring Central Park, and climbing the Empire State Building. It was a beautiful city and I fell in love with it the first time I walked mouth agape, neck craned upward through the bustling, busy streets. It felt like a whole other world from where I’d come from – in the Northern Maine woods!

Reflecting on this experience, though it took place eight years ago, I can still feel the chill and eeriness that filled the air that day. Everything was canceled in town and everyone went home early to join their families crowded around the television – waiting for some explanation, some understanding of what had taken place that morning.

I related the news of these dreadful events to the effects it would undoubtedly have on the structure of my family because my family was a military family. All I had ever known growing up is that my Daddy was a soldier – my hero and a man who served our country well. With talk of these terrorist attacks, my whole family stewed in fear that my dad may have to respond to the later implications of these attacks.

I assumed perhaps my Dad would be deployed to New York to help with clean-up and relief work at the site itself, but that window of opportunity never came about. Instead, our answer to that fearful question came three years later about a week before Christmas. My dad was being deployed to serve in Iraq for a year. He would depart in January for training – fly to Afghanistan in April – and return sometime the following May.

This is important because my Dad, my number one supporter, fan, and motivator – in service to our country and his obligations to the United States Military would miss the remainder of my junior year in high school and the entirety of my senior year – with the exception of graduation. I was crushed, and I remember being really frustrated as well. I was glad my dad was willing to serve, yet I was upset that he has to miss out on over a year of my life. It somehow didn’t seem fair, none of it seemed fair – and then I was reminded of that chilling, sunshiny, overly quiet Tuesday morning in New York City, Washington D.C, and the farm fields of Pennsylvania – and I guessed our country would never be the same after those events.

When I put this together with where I am at in life now – preparing to wrap up my undergraduate work in college – still working, living, and thriving in a country where eight years ago we were shaken and not sure we’d ever recover from terrorists, I am reminded that the love of the Lord endures, and “greater is He that is in us, than he that is in the world”!

As ministers it is essential to never forget the lasting impressions that world events have on people. Something about having your safety invaded, your home destroyed, or loved ones killed leaves lasting scars deep in the minds and hearts of people affected. This is important because as representatives of Christ, as vessels of the Holy Spirit we are given the healing balm required to bring true healing into the lives of these people – to see freedom dance where oppression once consumed – to see laughter thrive and spread where sadness once drug dully upon one’s heart. We have the key and we must use it! We simply must!

In the future I will continue to reflect on the significance of days like this. We never know who we may encounter that needs our hearts to be able to relate to theirs. Reflecting is a great way to find understanding and to collect our own thoughts so we can present them to others in a fashion that encourages growth, learning, and fresh perspective. God bless America!