story5056.xml
Title
story5056.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2002-09-11
911DA Story: Story
On the morning of September 11, 2001 at 8:46 I was looking out our window watching deer in our back yard and thinking what a beautiful world God has given us. Many may not believe this but suddenly the deer jumped and ran. They could not see me and I did not see anything moving that could have scared them. A few minutes later the phone rang and my husband said "you will not believe what I am looking at." "You won't believe the buck that was in our backyard," I said. "You better turn on the TV to CNN he told me." There it was, the carnage that wouldn't seem to stop from one crash report to another, finally to the towers falling.
My children and I had spent 2 horrible years in Pakistan when my first husband had slipped them out of daycare while I was at work and taken them to his home country. I was allowed to be with them if I lived and acted as a muslim. After 2 years and my parents mortgaging their just paid for home (after 30 years of waiting), we came home in 1991. By 1:00 p.m. I couldn't stop shaking. I walked outside into that sunny autum sky and thought how can such beauty and such ugliness be under the same sky. I called my dad and thanked him for bringing us home.
I was angry at what the terrorists had done but remembering the oppresion we had lived under, ironically I DID NOT FEEL TERRORIZED. Without a doubt I felt anger, but I remembered that my boys and I were living FREE. You see when you are in a fundamentalist country the people suffer terror regularly, but they are not free to act as we can. Americans are people from childhood who want to take action. We have blood drives, collect money, volunteer to clean up, comfort, ANYTHING, but we NEED to take action. Sitting still and suffering silently is NOT the American way. That is hard to understand by others who have lived oppressed all their lives, JUST as it is hard for us to understand their apparent complacency.
I wept with my father. I wept with my children. I wept with God. Yes, I believe that His was the first heart to break. But He IS our help. Our country was built on the idea that GOD CREATED, NOT God destroyed. It is important to remember that He is NOT the destroyer but the Creater and our help is in Him.
So with gratitude for all the men and women who have fought for our freedom and with incredible bravery, and with awe that that spirit has somehow lived in every American more than 200 years after that initial step toward freedom, I thank the Lord.
And to our God, I bow my head in thanks and pray America will continue as it was envisioned by our founding fathers, strong, brave, and FREE.
WE LOVE YOU AMERICA!
The Daniel Schilling family.
My children and I had spent 2 horrible years in Pakistan when my first husband had slipped them out of daycare while I was at work and taken them to his home country. I was allowed to be with them if I lived and acted as a muslim. After 2 years and my parents mortgaging their just paid for home (after 30 years of waiting), we came home in 1991. By 1:00 p.m. I couldn't stop shaking. I walked outside into that sunny autum sky and thought how can such beauty and such ugliness be under the same sky. I called my dad and thanked him for bringing us home.
I was angry at what the terrorists had done but remembering the oppresion we had lived under, ironically I DID NOT FEEL TERRORIZED. Without a doubt I felt anger, but I remembered that my boys and I were living FREE. You see when you are in a fundamentalist country the people suffer terror regularly, but they are not free to act as we can. Americans are people from childhood who want to take action. We have blood drives, collect money, volunteer to clean up, comfort, ANYTHING, but we NEED to take action. Sitting still and suffering silently is NOT the American way. That is hard to understand by others who have lived oppressed all their lives, JUST as it is hard for us to understand their apparent complacency.
I wept with my father. I wept with my children. I wept with God. Yes, I believe that His was the first heart to break. But He IS our help. Our country was built on the idea that GOD CREATED, NOT God destroyed. It is important to remember that He is NOT the destroyer but the Creater and our help is in Him.
So with gratitude for all the men and women who have fought for our freedom and with incredible bravery, and with awe that that spirit has somehow lived in every American more than 200 years after that initial step toward freedom, I thank the Lord.
And to our God, I bow my head in thanks and pray America will continue as it was envisioned by our founding fathers, strong, brave, and FREE.
WE LOVE YOU AMERICA!
The Daniel Schilling family.
Collection
Citation
“story5056.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed January 12, 2026, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/7113.