story10947.xml

story10947.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2004-09-11

On the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, three-year-old Joshua was watching a movie on our VCR while I relaxed next to him on the couch. I had been babysitting him since he was four months old and I had just started doing daycare in our home. Over the past three years, my five-year-old son Michael and I had grown attached to him.
When the movie was over, Joshua went to find some toys, and I stopped and rewound the movie. The receiver on the VCR was tuned to our local ABC affiliate. As I stared at the TV, I thought the burning buildings were in another country. They had to be. I turned to a different channel, just to validate my theory. Wrong. They were here in our beautiful homeland.
Just then, the first one collapsed. No surprise to me. I had seen the movie. The integrity of the structure was weakened. Of course it was falling. I called my mom. Together on the quiet phone line, we both watched the second tower fall. I hadn?t been watching the news as long as she had that morning. I wasn?t as shocked as she was. But then, as I listened to the reporters talking, I realized that not everyone in the buildings had made it out before they collapsed.
They said that around fifty thousand people were scheduled to be at work in the towers that day. Then they speculated that at least ten thousand people (though now we know it wasn?t that many), maybe more, were still inside the buildings when they collapsed into rubble. Ten thousand people?! At the very moment I was sitting on my couch in my living room, safe and sound, I believed that ten thousand people had died as I watched on TV.
I had never been much of a churchgoer. Even when I was a child, Sundays were spent sleeping in, reading the Sunday paper, and watching church on TV. I grew up with Dr. Robert Schuller and Pat Robertson. I did attend Vacation Bible School at my grandparents? church, and a Good News Club at my neighbor?s house. I believed in God. I just didn?t have real strong faith in him.
Take the election of 2000, for example. I was so worried that my candidate would not win the election that I made myself ill. I called the 700 Club?s prayer line, and the gal on the other end tried to cheer me up. She said, ?Congratulations, you have now officially worried yourself into a complete frenzy!?
She reminded me, however, that God is in control, and she advised me that I ought to find a church with which I can build a stronger foundation of faith. I didn?t end up taking her up on that suggestion.
As I watched the people run from the cloud of dust through the streets, I wished I had. But what good would it do to pray now? The damage is done. What can God possibly do now anyway?
Michael came home from Kindergarten at noon. I normally shut off the TV at that time anyway so that we can eat lunch. The boys played as I fixed their sandwiches. The images from the TV haunted me as I placed the slices of bread together and got out the chips. I turned on the radio in the kitchen, but shut it off. When the boys sat down to eat, I went into the bathroom and cried.
A couple of hours later, as the boys napped, I let the dog outside. What a beautiful day! Sunny, 75 degrees, blue skies, warm breeze. I wondered, ?Is this sky the same one that is over New York, Washington DC, and Pennsylvania?? The neighborhood was quiet; just the songs of the birds and the rustling of the trees. No dogs barking, no loud vehicles, no lawnmowers, no explosions, no sirens, no screaming. I felt ashamed that such violent destruction, death, and horror was just a few hundred miles away, and here I was in my little corner of the land taking in all this beauty. How dare I wallow in my blessings while others were suffering such horrendous losses! Again, I cried.
A friend called me and asked me if I wanted to listen in on a conference call on which people were going to pray. I was on this call when my husband, Jeff, came home from his job as a mechanic. He asked me why I was crying. I asked him, ?Do you have any idea how many people died today??
?A lot... a whole lot,? he replied.
He turned on the TV. I couldn?t bear to watch anymore of the news, so I took Michael to the store to get something for dinner.
Wednesday morning, one reporter put the grim reality into perspective when she said, ?The sun rose on a different world today.? After a couple of hours, I finally turned off the TV again. I tried to focus on the housework only to break down into tears at the thought of all the families whose moms or dads would never again be home to throw a load of clothes in the wash, prepare another meal, or read another bedtime story.
Jeff came home and again turned on the TV. Again I felt the need to leave the house. While I understood that he had been at work all day and was unable to hear all the news, I didn?t want to face it any more that day either.
I also didn?t feel that our son should see the burning buildings or hear about all the gruesome details. It was difficult enough to get him to sleep at night without that. When he was two, he had a night terror, and ever since, despite our best efforts to give him a stable and secure bedtime atmosphere, he has always been reluctant to go to sleep alone in his room.
My neighbor invited me to go with their family to a prayer service at their church. It got Michael and me out of the house, and I really wanted to feel closer to God.
But Michael had a tough time sitting still for the hour-long singing and prayer, so when we got home, I didn?t feel I had gotten anything out of the trip. I was still very sad and anxious, and he was sensing it, too. It was especially difficult to get him to sleep that night.
I didn?t pray often, but when I did, I went to our screened-in front porch. I can?t explain it, but I?d always felt closer to God there. The prayers I have said there have always gotten the best answers. Like when I started daycare in our home. I had asked God what I should do, and I got all these ideas about how to structure our home for a bunch of little kids who would have fun playing with toys on the front porch and running around our fenced-in backyard with our son. Then it happened. I had opened up for business, and within a month I had a full house. God must have been right about it!
Finally, after Jeff went to bed, I set to work picking up around the house and found myself on the front porch, where most of the toys were. Again I was amazed at how peaceful the night seemed. The breeze was blowing through the screens, the crickets were chirping, and the stars were shining. They were the same stars that shone above Pennsylvania, New York, and Washington DC, where workers fought against time to find anyone who may still be alive. Finally, I prayed.
Boy, did I pray. God already knows what is in our hearts, but it never hurts to tell Him anyway. I opened the flood gate to my heart, and out poured a river of fear, helplessness, anxiety, shame, anger, hope and thanks. Through tears and sobs, I told God how scared I was for the world my son is to grow up in, how sad I was for all the people who died and their families, how angry I was at the evil men who attacked us, how I felt we were helpless to stop it from happening again, how I was hopeful that our soldiers, who would surely be sent to find who was responsible, would succeed and be safe, and how I was thankful that I had a life that was so intact when others were destroyed, yet shameful at the same time.
I prayed like that for nearly an hour, until I couldn?t think of anything else to tell Him. When I was finished, I closed my eyes. I imagined God standing with His arms open wide. I envisioned myself placing my face on His chest as His arms closed around me. I could feel the love and security of His embrace, almost as if it were really happening. I remembered that feeling from when I was a child, and my daddy would give me the same warm hugs. Then I got up, dried my face, and got to work taking care of my home with a much easier spirit.
I began attending that church that my neighbors invited me to, and on October 7, 2001, I was baptized.