I was fifteen.
We talked amongst ourselves, one eye on the TV. Christine, my best friend, asked me what it meant. I tried to explain what I knew about the World Trade Center - it wasn't a lot. I told her that it was a key financial center, and the economy would be hurt badly. This has happened before in 1993. The towers will be fine. We can recover.
The Pentagon has also been hit.
There will be a war, I thought.
More rumors were flying. Parents were coming to pick up their kids. A fourth plane had hit the White House. No, it was headed toward the White House. The Capitol Building. A fifth plane had been hijacked.
The news agencies couldn't keep up. They were just as panicked, just as confused. Airports were being shut down. The West Coast was just waking up.
The first tower fell.
It hadn't been that long since we started watching - less than an hour - but most of us had already settled into this new mindset. It was obvious that something big had changed - our worldview had just been radically altered. But it wasn't until I watched the towers fall that all of this was cemented in my mind.
I couldn't stop watching. But I didn't want to talk anymore. I was numb. Who would do this to us? I was fifteen! A sophomore in high school. I had never heard of Al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden. I didn't understand how anything like this could happen.
I don't remember much about the rest of the day. I can't remember if they sent us home early, or if I waited. I know the news was a constant presence. The crash in Pennsylvania seemed almost surreal to me, like it was just one thing too many to add to the horrors of the day. I remember thinking that there was still another airplane out there somewhere. Somehow, I ended up in the car with my dad. We went to get gas because the tank was nearly on empty, and there were huge lines no matter where we went. I felt indignant. We were getting gas because we needed it, not because we were afraid! Gas had jumped to some astronomical price (probably what it is now). Jennie Snow helped us pump gas because the lines were going all over the place.
It was like living in a fog. I felt like I had to watch the news because history was happening in front of me, but I couldn't comprehend what I was seeing. Weeks passed, and more of the story unfolded. I was indignant. I felt like I had been personally attacked.
Sometime later, possibly on the month anniversary, maybe even on the year, there was a memorial service held at the World War II Museum in Auburn. I was asked to sing "For Such a Time as This." I thought it was a wildly inappropriate song for the occasion. I really didn't see what Esther had to do with the attacks on September 11. (It also didn't help that my school had done the asking, and I was not a fan of that place. Also, it was originally sung by a man. Not exactly my range.) But whatever. For the first time, I felt connected to what had happened.
Regardless of how it seemed then, time didn't really stop. Gradually, we moved on. We adjusted. Adapted. Sure, we looked up a little too long when we heard a plane. We spent a little more time at church. For awhile. We made a solemn decision to go to war. Then we spent seven+ years arguing about that decision. The war settled into the background.
In 2004, I went to New York City for my senior class trip. We went to Ground Zero. There's a whole page in my yearbook about it. (Probably because I'm the one who put it together.)
At the time, they were still working on shoring up some of the tunnels and fixing the surrounding damage, including Building 7. We saw the damaged sculpture that had been in the courtyard. There was almost a visceral connection for me to the site. For one, I couldn't believe how small it was. It seemed impossible that two towers could have fit in that small block of space, and I couldn't imagine how anyone got out alive. And I have a very vivid imagination. I think that was part of my problem.
I very nearly couldn't look. But once I looked, I couldn't stop looking. Exactly three times in the last ten years, I have felt compelled to watch videos of 9/11. It was a little bit like torture, because once I started down that path, I couldn't stop until it felt like my soul had been shredded. At least one of those times, I really freaked out a friend of mine. I bought the movie on DVD, but to this day, I can't watch it.
And I don't understand why I feel this way. The events of that day have somehow latched on to my heart, and sometimes, all I have to do is hear the words 'September 11' and I'm back to how I felt that day. All the fear, all the confusion, all the horror at watching bodies falling a hundred stories. It's like it happened yesterday.
I was mildly patriotic before September 11, 2001. Now, the force of my devotion to the United States of America sometimes scares me. I have to reign myself in because my thoughts are decidedly unChristian. I hate the people who did this because they stole from me a great deal of my capacity to feel compassion. Yet I must also love them and pray for their compatriots who are still trying to kill my countrymen. Sometimes I hate my country. I can't begin to tell you how difficult that is.
I'm angry.
I don't know when or if I'll stop being angry. I ask God every day for peace in my heart.
I fail a lot.
I wonder sometimes if this is how my grandparents felt after Pearl Harbor. In the 1970 film Tora Tora Tora!, following the surprise attack in Hawaii, Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto says, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." It's unlikely the Admiral actually said this, though there are apocryphal accounts of similar phraseology. However, I can't help but feel that the sentiment is incredibly accurate when applied to me on that awful day ten years ago.
I woke up.
I woke up to a world that has been steeped in sin and evil since Adam and Eve decided to trust a snake over God. I woke up to a world that sees genocide as an acceptable practice as long as it's done in secret. I woke up to a world that has no problem killing unborn children because they are unwanted, senior citizens because they are a drain on society, each other because we can. I woke up to a world that worships at the altars of tolerance and political correctness. I woke up to a world that deserves every horrifying thing that happens to it and more.
And yet...
Three years ago, I felt God's calling to become a missionary. I thought it was ridiculous. I was like Jonah, ready for God to punish Nineveh. He wanted me to forgive them? Ludicrous! Who does that? Why bother saving these people?
But He saved me. And I KNOW what I am.
Because His Love Compels Me - I must take up my cross and follow Him.
Because His Love Compels Me - I must love others as He loves me.
Because His Love Compels Me - I must extend the mercy and grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ unto the nations, making disciples and baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.
