Eleven years ago today my family was reeling from what was the most painful 6 months of our lives to that date. We had dealt with betrayal like I had never thought possible and almost everyone seemed eager to kick us while we were down. Instead of bringing my family closer, we all seemed completely numb to the situation and each other. Emotions were replaced with silence, joy with hollow laughter.
I remember waking up to my dad slamming the front door and joking about a friend's call saying we were under attack. He flipped on the TV thinking he would have to look for some story related to this "attack" only to find that every channel was showing the same thing: a smoking tower with the tail of a plane sticking out the side. I got up to ask him to turn down the TV and instead watched the second plane hit the tower. I was numb to everything, but I knew something was seriously wrong.
The rest of the day my family sat together, our eyes glued to the TV. I think this might have been the first time we sat so close together in months. We watched the towers fall, only vaguely processing the words of the reporters and the ramifications of the day. We remembered that my mom's sister was in D.C. staying not far from the Pentagon when we heard it had been hit. This was suddenly personal and yet we still acted as we knew we should rather than from our emotions. My mom made phones calls and found out sometime within the next 24 hours that my aunt was fine and would be staying a few extra days until the airports opened up. Tragedy finally seemed to give our family a break.
But 9/11 is so much more than the events of that day. It tore families apart--over and over again. Every time a survivor dealt (or deals) with their post-traumatic stress disorder they felt (maybe even literally) the plane hit. Every time a soldier left his or her family to fight the War on Terror, another family felt the affects of those terrorists. Every time a soldier realized they had missed another important moment in a family members life, they felt the attack. Every time a child realizes his mom or dad won't see them the day they make the football team or when they get married, they feel the attack. Those planes hit over and over again, just as destructive every time.
Yet the destruction has also brought healing. No longer invincible, our country realized we needed to band together if we are going to make it through. We realized that a house divided will not stand (Mark 3:25) and so we united, grew stronger, and became a new nation based on old principles.
A few months later a documentary was shown made by two guys who were following the firemen who first arrived on the scene. After some editing to make it a little more palatable, they released it for the world to see. Watching this documentary woke every suppressed emotion in me from the past year. I wept. Hard. The pain of my brothers and sisters pulled me out of myself and made me realize that feeling brings healing. I don't remember ever crying that much before or after that day. No citizen of the United States of America could watch that film so soon after the attack without feeling a deep grief for every person who lived or died in that tragic moment.
So, I WILL remember everything I can from that day. The pain and grief will never leave my heart--I want to remember how it felt to be attacked while separated from my fellow countrymen. I will treasure the healing that came with a unity so strong no act of violence could tear us apart. I will remember the flood of emotions I felt when, for the first time in so long, I looked outside of my own pain and allowed myself to empathize with others, cry for others, and grieve because of others--not because their pain was worse than mine, but because of the simple fact that they were in pain. I will remember that every freedom I have today is because we came together--one nation under God--and took a stand against evil.
Thank you to all the troops who have fought, all the families who have sacrificed for those troops, all the service men and women who were more than heroic on 9/11, and to everyone who allowed us to feel your grief as you lost loved ones because of that day. Words will never do justice to express our gratitude. We are in your debt.
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