Remembering

My mind wandered as I drove home, lulled by the perfect autumn day – flawless blue sky, bright sun hung high, country music playing on the radio. I felt relaxed and carefree. I barely even noticed the radio announcer come on between songs until one simple phrase jerked my thoughts to attention, “This year marks the 10th anniversary of the September 11th attacks.”

My heart skipped a beat. Really? Is that possible? It’s been 10 years already? Three of my four children have been born since then. I’ve moved to a different house. My oldest daughter, who wasn’t even one year old at the time, heads off to middle school next year. Really? Could all of that possibly have happened since that day? An entire decade? It seems like only a few years. But, then again, I didn’t lose anyone that I loved that day. To those families, every single day of the past decade must have dragged on at a nightmarish crawl.


Just the other week, I was musing to my Dad how my memory is made up more of snapshots than of video footage. Some people remember their lives like one long movie – each scene replaying itself in detail upon recollecting. My mother-in-law is one of them. I think my husband and oldest daughter closely rival her. Me? I tend to forget most things except certain scenes that are captured in my memory like still-shots. Remembering the happenings of the past for me is like looking through a photo album, not like viewing a movie. Sometimes my mental photographs are of the expected, important things: my tuxedoed husband waiting for me at the end of the church aisle; my screaming newborn being placed in my arms; opening the results of my nursing boards with trembling hands. Others, however, are completely random, and I’ll never know why my mind decided to click the shutter at that particular moment.


On a few occasions, however, the details of a situation will impact me so deeply that I will remember in video. The morning of September 11, 2001, is one of those times. I was in the family room of my old house that Tuesday morning, 10 years ago.

The first house my husband and I had owned.

The house we moved into while I miscarried our first baby.

The house that was filled that morning with the happy babbles and squeals of the baby we now think of as our firstborn.

I was busy packing up for a fun outing with a dear friend. We were taking a road trip to the outlet mall, with our babies in tow, for a day of shopping. As I scuttled around, packing up everything the baby might need in the course of the day, my husband called from work. He said, “I think you need to turn on the T.V. I don’t know what’s going on yet, but something’s happening.”

I clicked on the T.V.

I continued to putter around, frequently turning my attention to the news to learn of new developments in the situation. As I walked from the kitchen into the family room, my eyes caught the screen just in time to see the second tower fall. I stood behind the couch, clutching the cushions, as the details of that moment seared into my memory:

The sickening collapse

The huge cloud of rubble and smoke

Dan Rather saying, “There are no words.”

The shocked silence

My little girl babbling contentedly in the background – so innocently unaware

My friend arrived at my front door just a short time later. In a way, it seemed wrong to go shopping when so many people had just lost their lives. Disrespectful somehow. But what do you do? For those of us left, life keeps marching on. So, we packed up our precious, blissfully ignorant babies, and we left.

Many areas throughout the outlet mall had televisions tuned in to live-time news. We took little breaks in our shopping here and there to stare up at the screens and wait for new news. The emotions of the day were strange – the normal fun and laughter of spending time with a friend, undergirded by a disturbing unease at what was unfolding in our nation.


During the next couple of weeks, my husband and I watched the news almost non-stop. With every report, my sense of insecurity grew. So many rumblings of more attacks, possible methods of attack, arrests of criminals found to be planning attacks. I had never been so glad to live in the middle of the continent. Everything bad happens on the coasts, right?

As we sat on the couch in the evenings, watching the horror, my hand kept returning to my swollen belly. My next little baby was in there. A baby boy. I had been feeling flutterings for several weeks, but now he was really beginning to kick. The tears welled up one evening as he bumped up against my hand. What have we done? What have we brought this little baby into? What if it only gets worse from here? He could be drafted into military service. Even choose it willingly. How could I ever handle that?


Either I said some of that out loud, or my husband just noticed the tears on my cheeks, because he reached over and clicked off the T.V., declaring that we were done watching the news for awhile. Wise man.

Three weeks after the attack, my husband was called away on a business trip – to New York of all places. I was sick with dread. Logically, I knew that New York was no more dangerous than any other part of our nation, but the wound was just too fresh and raw for logic to win out in my heart. It seemed to me that New York was the worst possible place in the world to go at that moment. And stepping foot on an airplane? Don’t even get me started! I had never covered my husband in more prayer.

One morning, during my quiet time, I was reading in the Psalms. Psalm 127, to be exact. The words jumped up off the page, grabbed me by the shoulders, looked me straight in the eye, and then came to rest in my heart. “Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows; for so He gives His beloved sleep.” What I already knew settled deeply into my heart. Our security… my security…does not lie in the hands of mortal men. Our military, valiant as they are, are not my true source of safety. God Almighty guards my life. No catastrophe sneaks through His ranks that He does not knowingly allow. And although that rubs salty raw in the midst of great loss, it also brings great comfort. Things are not out of control.


In the margin of my Bible that morning, next to Psalm 127:1, I wrote, “WTC collapse.” It stays to this day. This is why I won’t ever replace my Bible. I’ll rebind it as many times as it takes for it to limp along until the end of my life. There are little notes like that penciled in all over my Bible. Now, whenever I read Psalm 127, I remember the emotions of that day, and that month. I remember the unsettled fear, and I remember the peaceful calm that settled in like a thick blanket when I read those words.


I am so grateful to live in this country. I am so thankful for our military – for their skill, their courage, and their sacrifice. Most of all, I am thankful for a sovereign God who knows my name, and who holds my life in the palm of His hand.