Christopher and I were enjoying breakfast at our favorite diner, across 12 Mile Road from our neighborhood. Hubby had taken an early flight from Detroit to Chicago where he would catch another flight heading towards New England. It was a tradition to have breakfast "out" on days Dad would be leaving for a business trip.
As with many diners in the Detroit area, this one had a television which we would glance at between bites of omelets and sips of beverages. The morning news program was talking about an accident at one of the two towers, perhaps a small plane had crashed into it... no one even conceived the idea of a jet liner being possible.
Then as we watched, the second plane hit. America's nightmare began. I once heard that 9/11 was the actual beginning of WW III. Having grown up in the nuclear shadow, I laughed at the thought. I am not laughing, anymore.
Sometimes I will watch a movie or a TV show and the storyline causes me to realize... that was before. It has to be... and when I check the date it always is. Before the world changed.
Christopher and I quickly finished our breakfast, paid our bill, and ran toward our rented house, surrounded by millions of people. I wished I was home, my real home in another state where the corn grew high and the brick buildings of the University stood so solid and where my daughter was and everything familiar. (Her husband was finishing his work on his PhD and they had not moved to New England, yet.)
Soon we would find that Detroit was high on a list of possible targets. We forget now what was so evident that day... we did not know what would happen next. As citizens, we weren't even sure who was attacking us.
It would be that evening before we heard Hubby was okay and the flight brought down over Pennsylvania had not originated in Chicago. We all lived in a fog long after that day and I'm not sure it has ever really lifted.
It is a completely different America now than I knew before that day.
Today I will pray for the families of those who lost their lives that day as well as those who have fallen in the War on Terror since then. Perhaps it is a good time to reread Psalm 91 or any of the Psalms for that matter... and remember that God really is in control, even when we do not understand.
Picture: Fox's The Five Facebook page
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