9/11 ... holding onto hope.

9/11/01

everyone remembers where they were “when the world stopped turning.”

normally i would have heard about it as it was unfolding, since i wake up to a clock radio. but i had gotten up early to study for a spanish quiz, then made my way to the 9:30am class. i overheard a few students talking about a terrorist attack, but was unclear of the details, and then the teacher arrived. she was also obviously unaware of the events, and gave us our quiz like it was just another day. (on thursday she apologized for not having known and decided not to keep the grade.) when i got out of class, i went back to my room and turned on the tv, staying glued to it for the rest of the day. i watched in disbelief with the rest of the country as news reports came in. i called my parents. no matter how strained our relationship may have been at the time, i needed to know they were okay. i spoke to my mom and learned that my dad, who traveled for work, had been in d.c. the day before and used the very parking lot of the pentagon that had been hit to turn around, and was just outside of new york city that morning - close enough to see the smoke from the towers as he and his partner started home, thankful they had already rented a car the night before.

that morning i was so tired from being up late, but couldn’t help but be refreshed by the crisp fall air and clear blue sky. it was like that the rest of the week, too. but suddenly it all seemed so wrong. it seemed so wrong for life to carry on. to keep going to class. to want to work out. but we had to. allowing our lives to come to a screeching halt is exactly what the terrorists would have wanted. they thought that attacking our ideals, and some of our precious lives with them, would bring our nation to its knees.

it did. just not in the way they had hoped. they didn’t account for our hope.


i think about job. God allowed satan to take almost everything that was precious to job - his children, his servants, his possessions, and even his health. but the one thing satan could not take was job’s faith. despite all that happened, job refused to curse God.

when an enemy (or a friend, for that matter) comes against us, they will try and strike us in every way that they think will get to us. they think that if they attack the thing we stand for, then they can take away what we stand on. but they cannot, unless we let them. we are so much more than what represents us. we must choose to rise above.

the hope that rose in the midst of such devastation, more than anything, is what sticks with me about that horrible day. and that is what makes me proud to be an american. our spirit is insatiable, and as angry as that makes terrorist groups still to this day, that is what we still have going for us 10 years later.

“let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful.” (hebrews 10:23)