It was September 11th yesterday which brings out a storm of social media posts, articles, and broadcasts focused on remembering. The trending hashtags on Twitter were #neverforget, #remember911 and #WhereWereYou.
As I have for the past eighteen years, I thought of that morning that I stood inches from my TV screen as my two year old watched Blue's Clues on a different TV and my eight month old napped. I thought of the confusion, the sadness, the anxiety, and the pain of that day. I thought of the fear, of the rage, and of how the rumors swirled of what building would be hit next. I thought of the frantic phone calls to my husband who was in DC and the sickening busy signal buzzing in my ear time and time again. I thought of the ways I pleaded and bargained with God to bring my husband home. I thought of the moment I heard the garage door open and how I felt gratitude and guilt that my family was intact all at the same time.
In the days, weeks, and months that followed that day, I remember that as each moment passed there became an increasingly stronger awareness that for Americans there would always be a sense of "before" and "after". Even when questions still abounded in our hearts and in our heads, even when we weren't exactly sure of who was responsible for this evil, even when we hadn't assessed all the damage and the actual numbers of lives lost, we knew that we would be irrevocably changed by this one bright, cloudless, spectacularly beautiful September day that in an hour's time became so shockingly dark.
My kids have heard the stories. They have seen images of the crumbling towers, the burning Pentagon, and the smoldering wreckage in Pennsylvania. They have heard of Americans jumping out of buildings. Of families clutching photos of loved ones and of the death of ordinary men and women just going about their ordinary days.
As I woke this morning there was a sense of relief that we had made it through that day again. At least for those of us whose families were unharmed that day, we could choose to go on from here and tuck that sadness away until the next year. But as I scrolled through social media today I noticed a different post. It urged us to remember September 12th.
It occurs to me that I do often think about the beauty that followed so closely on the heels of the brutality in those days and weeks and months after the tragedy, but I'm not sure I have accurately emphasized that to my children. And what a tragic mistake it is to leave out the details of September 12, 2001. Of September 13th or October 20th or December 1st or of any day in the weeks and even many months that came after September 11, 2001.
On September 12th the contractors who were finishing our basement pulled into my driveway flying an enormous American flag on the back of their truck. I was watching my two young nieces along with my little boys because their daycare at the State Department where my sister-in-law and brother-in-law worked was closed. I can picture so clearly those mens' fallen faces, the way we shook our heads in sadness at each other, and the way one of them leaned down to greet the children with a sweet smile and broken English.
I remember going to the local nursery to pick up something and how the woman behind the counter and I looked each other directly in the eyes. We said nothing but gave each other a sad, intentional smile. Later that week I went to Party City to buy supplies for Joe's third birthday which would be in a few weeks. At the cash register little yellow ribbons were sitting in a dish. I pinned one to my shirt and grabbed tightly to the hand of the employee to say thank you. In the days that followed we watched children play on the swingsets in the backyard and listened to the deafening silence of the skies above our houses, suddenly absent of the planes we were used to hearing coming from the airport only five miles from our neighborhood.
Those are not unique or new stories. But I'm afraid they are stories we forget to emphasize in our quest to make sure that the acts of that day are remembered. If I want my children to live in hope and faith then they absolutely have to know the ways that we lost those things and they have to know how hard we worked to find them again. They have to know how hardened our hearts were in those first hours. And they have to know how we went about softening them. They have to know that there was no way we could have done it by sitting scared and alone in our homes.
We pulled close to each other. We trudged through all of that sadness to find our hope again by loving strangers as well as friends. We smiled at each other. We slowed down in the grocery store check out line. We looked each other in the eye. We held each other's gazes. We were gentler and kinder. We loved each other so well.
Those of us who have faith in Jesus and have learned how He will bring beauty from the ashes, don't just magically feel it. We have to work hard and be intentional to find it.
The details of that horrific, historic morning of Tuesday, September 11th are worthy of our focus and our remembrance. As worthy are the memories of many, many Tuesdays that followed. We are required to share all of the stories - from the fall all the way through to the rising. Those Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Saturdays for weeks and months taught us that we could believe in the words of Psalm 27:13.
"I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living."
We saw the horror. We saw the pain. We saw the fear. We saw the grief.
But we saw hope and love and light and compassion and community. We saw a faith tested and a faith restored because we watched as the goodness of the Lord sprung up from the most horrific scenes we had ever witnessed.
I'll never forget September 11th. And I will never forget September 12th.
