Part 2 I Remember

  Part 2,

Head Spinning, I stood there

 

I stood there as long as I could. We both in a sort of head spinning reality.  Too many realities.  The reality that we were no longer untouchable. The reality that we were now exposed and vulnerable. The reality that we have people who do not love us. It was shocking to say the least. The United States of America had its share of struggles for sure, but outside of the self-inflicted Civil War and Pearl Harbor, we had been insulated from war, insulated from dangers that inflicted other nations. We had survived hundreds of years, untouchable. It in itself was a miracle. We took the war wherever it needed to go, but not on our soil. We had been immune from the severe sufferings that other nations had endured, sometimes by us. But that day changed everything. It became our Pearl Harbor, except the group responsible didn’t hit our military, it declared war on the very soul of this nation, these planes, and those people had declared war on America.  We had nowhere to hide and there were still planes missing, unaccounted for as the FAA did all in its power to contact every pilot to have the skies over America, and cleared.

 

First time in our history since the Wright brothers got us started in the friendly skies. The skies were no longer friendly and on that dreadful day, in that dreadful morning, every plane not landed was under enemy control. We didn’t know who we were fighting, we just knew that someone had just declared war on us, and we had to answer this sinister ploy. Now we had to bring them down, whoever they were.

 

 

I did what my grandmother did….

 

I found myself once again doing what my grandmother did so often, that was to pray. We as a nation were kind of lost and stunned.  There was nothing left to do but stay glued to the radio and internet on that day and pray. I wanted to go home, I felt like I did when President J.F. Kennedy died, sad. I wanted to go home like I did when I was a child and the principle announced over the public address system that the president of the United States was dead. School closed early that day, jobs sent workers home, it was a sad day then and it was a sad day on 9/11/01; looking back, I think 9/11 was on a Thursday or Friday, I don’t want to check, I just feel that it was because I wanted to get to church, I needed answers, I wanted to feel safe and I wanted to understand Gods plan in all of this.

 

 

Sunday Came, People came

 

On that Sunday, I hurried to church to find hardly an empty seat. People who I hadn't seen for a long time showed up that Sunday, they too were seeking answers, they too needed a shelter. I believe most of America’s churches were full that Sunday. I mean where do we go when hard times hit? What do we do when things are so far out of our control that we feel scared? We as Americans turn back to the God of our fore-fathers, yes, we do as my grandmother did when I was a child, and we find ourselves praying. Somehow, what was so important prior to 9/11 became trivial, even petty. We saw people jump out of windows, we heard phone calls of men and women saying goodbye to a wife, a mother, a son or daughter. We all experienced the horrors of that day and it brought us to our knees.