Have you
ever been told to seal your windows with plastic and duct tape because a bomb
might go off and radiation could leak into your house? Have you ever stood by the bedside of a loved
one and wondered if anthrax was going to kill them? Have you ever calculated wind speed and
wondered if a dirty bomb could kill you?
Have you held the love of your life, when he came home from two weeks of
serving only God knows where, as his body was wracked with sobs of grief? I have and if you have, then you must live in
Washington D.C.
This tenth anniversary
of 9/11 has been so much harder for me than any of the other anniversaries. Ten years later I am still haunted by the
phone call that changed my life forever.
The last several days I have been trying to figure out why I have such
an overwhelming amount of grief. Perhaps
it is all the natural disasters we have experienced in the last three weeks:
earthquakes, hurricane Irene, flooding from tropical storm Lee. Perhaps it has been my husband on travel and
gone just like those two weeks following 9/11.
Or perhaps it is because I am finally grieving the loss of a life I
never lived; a life feeling safe and secure.
Everyone
has a 9/11 story. It was like Pearl
Harbor, a day that lives in infamy. For
me it was a Tuesday of the second week of teaching my brand new group of all
day Kindergarteners at a private school in Great Falls, VA. I was still a blushing bride, having only
just been married that July 14, and was giving my students a reading test. One of the parent volunteers rushed into my
room and, looking panic stricken, told me to go to the office as my husband was
on the phone. Trying not to panic
myself, I flew to the office only just glancing at the TV being viewed by staff
in the room I passed through. My new
husband told me to drop everything and come meet him at home right away, he had
to leave. Terrorists had struck the twin
towers and the Pentagon.
God only
knows how I made it safely to our apartment in Falls Church. I raced over the hills of Great Falls with
tears streaming down my face, singing to a Point of Grace album, praying for
the safety of my dad, who was working at the Pentagon, and my sister and family
all working in D.C. I remember wondering
if all hell was breaking loose and America was in a war of which we had not
been notified. Mostly, I was terrified
that my husband had to leave and could tell me nothing more.
Thankfully
I got home in time to help my husband pack a small bag of toiletries. He informed me that I could not come with
him, but he would be home in a day or two.
We decided I should stay with my parents since they lived farther
outside the city, so if there were more attacks I would be farther from
D.C. I remember little of the rest of
that day except crying in my husbands arms, wishing he could stay, but telling
him I was glad he was one of the ones the government called in a time of
need. He got in his Camry and was gone.
There is
something horrifying about not knowing where your husband is and not knowing how
long he will be gone. His original
prediction of a day or two passed. I got
the occasional e-mail telling me he did not know when he would be able to come
home. My family all went back to work,
and I went back to the classroom and an empty apartment. The silence of the days just after 9/11, when
the planes were grounded, seemed as fragile as my heart.
When my
husband was finally able to come home I remember us both just crying our eyes
out. Mine were tears of relief; his
seemed more to be tears of grief. He
just kept saying, “It was awful, so awful.”
He has never shared more. Perhaps
he will never be able to share more, as there are laws he has to keep. What we do both share is a loss of
safety. America always had bad guys, but
this was different. We learned this even
more in the months and years ahead.
The past
ten years have been rocky. Just when a
feeling of safety would start to hover, another alert would go out to the D.C.
area. “Don’t open suspicious packages.” “Be prepared for nuclear bombs.” “Keep iodide pills on hand.” “You may want to seal the window cracks with
duct tape, there is a dirty bomb threat.”
The reality sunk in personally as we had a family member sickened by
anthrax. My husband began keeping an
overnight bag and scooter at work; prepared to walk out of town like so many
others did on 9/11. We put off having
children, since we were not sure what the future held, and we never turned off
our cell phones, always keeping them charged “just in case.”
Evil men
never seemed far away as we survived one incident after another. The D.C. sniper had my husband working
overtime, and me wondering if it was safe to get groceries. This year, as the anniversary approached, we
had an earthquake that was so loud that I thought we were finally being
attacked by another set of incoming planes.
The fear boils below the surface, unnoticed until we have a threat or a
natural disaster.
Personally,
I struggle emotionally and spiritually over the reality of no longer “feeling”
safe. I try to convince myself that it
is just a feeling, not a reality. Just
when I start to believe my mantra, the 9/11 anniversaries come around to remind
me that there is nothing the government, my veteran father and grandfather, nor
my amazing husband can do to keep me safe.
Only in the hands of God am I safe.
That safety is not for my physical here and now life, rather, it is one
of reassured eternal life. Jesus told
us, “do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear
him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28, ESV).
Jesus knows
my fear and my pain. God came to earth,
took on human flesh, and experienced those emotions himself as Jesus. God cannot have a relationship with me, a
sinner full of fear, without a sacrifice.
Jesus was the perfect sacrifice, bridging the gap, so that I can have a
relationship with God. “In God we trust”
is not just a saying on a coin. It is
stepping out in faith and believing that though I do not deserve to have a
relationship with God, he has offered it as a free gift. All I have to do is receive it; to trust
him. Do you trust him?
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