From The Mud Puddle

It almost feels a tad trite to blog about September 11th, 2001.

I really wasn't planning on doing so. I didn't want to just blog about it just because I felt I should on some level of obligation.

But as my husband and I talked this morning about the upcoming election and things we both had seen and heard, my mind also remembered this day seven years ago.

I remember being online, seeing initial images early that morning a couple of times before it sank in what the headlines were saying. A friend of mine came online and we talked in IM for a few minutes, though words really could not express the thoughts associated with being hit in the gut with the news.

I turned on the TV, even though my kids were busy working on their schoolwork in the kitchen. My daughter, then 11, came into the living room and watched with me. I tried my best to explain what was happening without alarming her. My son eventually followed and watched a bit of the video images. What does a mother tell her children when we are watching an attack on American soil?

As the events unfolded that morning and throughout the day and weeks ahead, as we understood what had occurred, we understood one thing. America would never be the same. We never could as a nation go back to that same innocence that we held onto for so long. Terror had come to our doorstep and left a sense of uneasiness in its shadow.

I felt the hit as our American values and personal freedoms and way of life and faith was attacked from beyond by people that hated us with a deep penetrating hate unlike anything we've ever seen before on these shores. I looked on knowing it could have been me, knowing it might be next time if those who attacked us prevailed in their evil plans.

Likewise it was hard for me to feel the immensity of pain that others in our nation felt, even those like me without personal connections to the events on the East Coast. I had personally gone through my own personal tragedy as three of my unborn babies died one after another in a 14 month period of time a few years before this. I know, to compare the two events is like comparing apples and oranges, but for me, there was nothing that could come close to touching those deep overcoming emotions of loss like I had felt when death knocked at my own doorstep years prior to September 11th.

This left me with a certain disconnect as people wrote about how they felt, where they were. I was probably still very numb to some degree, though I empathized with the immensity of what I imagined others were going through. I read stories and prayed for God to comfort them as He had comforted me in my loss. I was encouraged by the patriotism and those who recognized our God, the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, as being in control in the midst of the turmoil, panic and fear.

It was on this day, seven years ago, our nation changed. We watched fellow Americans die and watched as our nation went to war. I remember stating to a friend that if this war continued on for many years (rather than the short time we saw the Gulf War of 1991 last) that it could eventually affect our sons who were very young at the time. Today as I ponder September 11th, I ponder the information knowing my son is now 16 as the war continues on. .

We are touched because as believers we know somehow God is in control in the midst of all of this, setting the stage for end times while likewise working good in the midst of the ashes. And in it all, we know there is a certain peace in the midst of tragedy that is discovered only as you walk through fiery trials that only God can give.

Jesus says,

"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." John 16:33

posted by Muddy at 2:21 PM