I want to say I have waited to write this... and then this morning I woke up to hundreds of remembrances... yes hundreds.. no exaggeration.... Before diving into all that I first want to say that I am grateful to have in my life people who realize the higher aspect of the Lord's ways and that our thoughts and ways are lower and I am grateful to those people because they pull me up towards Him... and there is no greater gift one could ever give....
So this morning as I was barely awake I was reminded... I was reminded of the time I went into a diner in Manhattan and got to talking to the waitress ... it was a few years after September 11, 2001 and as we talked she shared how she and her extended family were raising 4 nephews and 3 neices for they had lost both their mother and their father....
I remembered driving by those park and ride places and having been told that police officers were now putting chalk marks on tires to tick off the days that those cars weren't being driven away because there was a possibility of their driver having been killed during the attacks on the towers....
I remembered how much I loved driving the FDR (the highway that runs the west side of the City) and as I got to lower Manhattan and would look up and see that incredible skyline... well it is still incredible but there is a hole in the middle and I remembered today that day after day when we lived in Brooklyn when I would drive that road and get to that place I was always filled with gratitude because people flocked from all over the world to see it and I could see it every day... every day....
I remember driving down a highway and seeing the highway sign flashing that all bridges and tunnels into the City were closed ( we were living in New Jersey 15 west of the George Washington Bridge) and I thought in all the years I had lived in and around the city (for as a child my parents had lived in NJ as well) I had never seen such a thing...
My mind went to the thought that maybe the President is in town but then quickly dismissed that idea because the whole City isn't closed down when that happens....
I remember pulling up into the driveway and watching as my husband ran out of the house desperate to get to me to tell me that one of my really good friends was ok... He was so nervous I would have heard something about the mornings events and knowing my friend worked on the higher levels of the towers I would have made the conclusions that she was gone.. but she had called him (that is a whole other story I might get to here but it was incredible that which happened in her life the night of September 10th....)
You see I had tried to call Jim once I saw the highway signs but there was no getting through.....
I remember being in West New York.. which actually is in New Jersey... West of the Hudson River .... and seeing the West Side Highway vacant... no traffic on a highway that you can imagine how busy it is.... at all times.... but except for emergency vehicles it was barren....
I remember how mega malls near us were like ghost towns because of the threat of anthrax...
I remember driving through Teaneck, NJ and seeing military type dressed individuals looking and checking every car....
I remembered this morning how a friend had shared how another mutual friend of ours ran ... ran for his life as those towers began to fall... and watched as shards of glass fell and cut off limbs and killed people right in front of him.... and how running in that place was running through puddles of blood... I remembered hearing that story.. how do ever forget....
I remember how quiet the skies were as we were in the flight pattern of Newark airport and how there were no planes in the skies...
I remember hearing about the family that was aboard one of the planes... a mom, a dad, a child, and a new baby on the way to see grandparents for the first time since the birth... I remember that story some ten years later... seriously... the thought of one whole family gone... gone.... and that is only one story...
With all the people we knew in and around the area.. it was quite amazing that while they suffered great loss that day I did not.. I did not lose one person..
But my friend who had worked in those towers but had called my husband to say she was ok... she worked late September 10th based on a teaching my husband had taught on knowing your productive cycles of work.. and she had gotten into a place where she was getting a lot of work done and so she worked late with the thought that she would go in late...
She woke up to a phone call.. someone wanting to know if she was ok... as the phone rang and she answered it and began a conversation.. she turned her head in time to watch the second plane hit the building she would have been working in.....
A team from our church went in in the days that would follow and she went with them.. and the pictures that plastered the surrounding walls all around ground zero were filled with pictures of people she knew... she could barely walk two feet without seeing another photo and knowing the person within it....
We saw heros that day... men and women who ran into the building who would never come out... people who stayed on those top floors with coworkers who were in wheel chairs and couldn't get down... we heard the stories.. we saw the effects... the smoke rose from that place day after day after day and the most magnificent skyline was changed forever.....
This morning all of these and more flooded my heart and my mind.....
We saw heros that day and we learned the names of people who hated us... people who hated us and wanted us dead... people who were enemies to the United States and her citizens.....
I am not a pacifist... I'm not... I have friends and family who serve this country and serve her well.. in foreign lands away from family and friends... individuals who have laid down their lives for the freedoms that we enjoy.....I value them.. I appreciate them.. I am grateful for them....
And the quest to kill the leader of those attacks was accomplished... and I was left grateful... I was left grateful.. grateful he was gone.. grateful he was dead... grateful for the resolution that would come for the families... though the towers are still gone and loved ones are still gone .. I can appreciate that this is a huge milestone .. and that is an incredible understatement
And here is the but... I can't ... I simply can't imagine the moment when I stand before my Lord .. that moment in time... eternity.. when I stand before Him and realize in a way and a depth I had not ever before how completely other He is and how I can only stand there acceptable in Him because of His son.... That in that moment I am received seeing Him and His grace not because of anything I have ever done but because of Him...
That awful and incredible moment when some will for all eternity take His hand and be known by Him and love and be loved by Him forever and ever and others He will have to hear Him say to "I never knew you..." and live the consequences of those truths..
How can I rejoice over a death of a villain who will have to hear those words... How can I rejoice over the death of one who was made in the image of God and turned his heart and his mind and his life away from the intentions for which he was created and became a man who could kill and cause so much harm.....
So I am grateful .. grateful that this villain is gone... I am... I am grateful he can do no more harm...
And I am grateful for the heroes... the men and women who died that day and in the days since .. here on American soil or abroad... I am grateful for their stories.. and their hearts and their actions of service....
and I am grateful... grateful for a Savior who saw me and while I was an enemy and a hater of my Creator.. my God.. He died for me... and gave His life for me... so that I could know Him... so that we could all know Him....
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