Blue

I remember it was a beautiful, normal morning.

I got up, got ready, drove to work and settled in at the desk. Soon, the phone was ringing. No big surprise, the youth director was running late - he told me he was getting ready and had been watching the Today show when a small plane had flown into one of the twin towers in New York City. He urged me and my co-workers to go cut a tv on (we worked in a church - so there were tv's around!) and see it. I remember thinking it was odd, but I wandered down the hallway anyway and casually mentioned it to my co-workers.

It was a slow morning -we decided to wander to the media room and check it out.

I will never forget the site we saw as we turned on the television. Never forget it. We watched with the entire nation as the second plane headed straight for the second tower and then the rest of the morning is a blur. Well, all except that blue, blue sky.

Soon, the phones lit up, parents concerned for the children in the preschool program at the church, all of us calling friends discussing the horror we were witness to on our television screens.

My next memory is of all of us gathering again and praying for the people who we knew had to be trapped in those now smoking, burning towers. We had learned of the plane crashing into the Pentagon in Washington,DC and the lost plane, which turned out to be the famous doomed Flight 93. I remember that blue sky as the perfect backdrop to that first tower falling before our eyes and then again as the second one fell.

It was a morning I will never forget. It was September 11, 2001.

I can tell you every person who was standing with me. Carel, Molly, Pat, Becky, Alice and Jon. I know that I was wearing black pants and blue blouse. Blue - the color of the day.

It was a moment that changed everything in my world, from exaggerating my fear of flying, to the course of our adoption and the direct growth of my immediate family. At the time of the attacks, we were slated for international adoption, over the course of the next year, we watched as not one, but two agencies we had chosen to work with, closed shop due to the aftermath of that day.

It's effect is still evident today - my blogger friend over at Gang's All Here is traveling to China to pick up her precious daughter today- leaving on a long flight on September 11th - my prayers are multiplied for her safety - directly related to that day, seven years ago.

I can't see a firehouse, or hear a siren go off without remembering the shrill sounds replayed over the following days of September 11th. The piercing call of alarms signaling to the world that over 300 men and women of New York's finest perished in the rubble of those buildings I watched fall, while the blue, blue sky stood and watched.

I can't walk by a missing person poster at Walmart or the post office or a utlity pole, without thinking of all those papers, blowing in the wind, lining the streets of New York, putting the faces of the missing loved ones of that horrific day into all of our minds, as reporters broadcast day and night standing in front of those displays, interviewing those left behind to search. It was gripping. I remember just sitting and watching the tv, crying with those who were hopeless, helpless to make sense of the tragedy and to find the ones they loved.

I remember where I was when Reagen was shot - sitting in Bible class when Richard Jimenez and Joel Presley came running in to tell us. I remember where I was when the space shuttle fell out of the sky, sitting in a college classroom, but those events, no matter how sad and tragic, have not impacted me nearly the same as when I stood in the church media center and watched those towers fall against that blue, blue sky.

I wonder if the sky will be blue tomorrow. I know that my heart will be blue as I think and remember the people who were lost that day. I don't think I know anyone that perished that day, but as a child I did spend a year in New York and I have often thought that perhaps one of my third grade classmates could have been there in the Towers that day, or maybe someone they loved was there - and that it personalizes it for me. Knowing that I have a cousin that once worked at the Pentagon, that my daddy has friends that once worked there personalizes that loss for me as well. And having been an airline passenger, I can easily personalize each precious life on all those planes.

Whether I personally knew anyone that day or not, the event marked my life, my family, my future as I know it did countless numbers of us as Americans.

My prayer is that the families of those lost on that day are comforted today. That they know that their loved ones are remembered, and that we as a nation will hopefully never forget.

When I think of that day, I think of the average person, taking the train to downtown New York, or out to the Pentagon or maybe driving to the airport for a routine flight. I picture them as they start their day, grab their coffee, hug their loved ones, check their baggage, joke with co-workers and then suddenly, meet their end - unexpectedly.

What a lesson for those of us left behind to remeber them all. Live our life, love and hug more, joke and laugh more, and prepare our hearts every morning to live the day as if at any moment we would meet our end.

Prayers for all!

Happy Patriot's Day,
Beverly

Song of the Day: I'm Already There, Lonestar (we heard this a lot in the days surrounding 9/11)
and Where Were You, Alan Jackson