This has been a very peaceful morning for me...delightful almost. I went up and helped open the clubhouse then spoke to Marty for awhile. The I golfed instead of going to church...there just isn't going to be many more opportunities like this morning to golf so I shifted gears from my Sunday routine and did something different, mellow and I really enjoyed. Afterwards I hung around chatting for a bit with some other members and totally enjoyed that as well. What a nice way to begin the day...quite unlike that Tuesday morning, ten years ago on this date, September 11, 2001...which was anything BUT peaceful.
I was married to the X at the time and because she was from the New Jersey/New York Metro area she really struggled with what was happening, took it even more personally then most of us. And because of my life long study of history and my tendency to see raw reality for what it is...I instantly knew we were at war. I remember talking to M (the X) on the phone (she was at work, I called her and told her to find a TV) that this is Pearl Harbor all over again only we get to watch it LIVE, in real Time. It was a very difficult and disturbing day. I drank a few vodka cocktails (I just had gotten home from work, I was on 3rd shift so it was my "evening") as I watched the coverage including the 2nd plane hitting the South Tower of World Trade and then in stunned shock watching those two Towers fall.
Later that evening, before I went in to work M and I were outside in our yard, we lived in the county outside of Holland, Michigan at the time right on the main airline flight path between Chicago and Detroit. Seeing NO planes in the sky was surreal...just to look up and realize that every plane is grounded and we are at war was a humbling and frightening thought.
I went in to the factory at Herman Miller where I worked as President Bush was speaking to the country and I have this crystal clear memory of his voice echoing through dozens of radios throughout this vast, empty factory...Even now, I can close my eyes and still hear it...that echo will haunt me as long as I live.
Often when I think back to the last straw breaking in my marriage and my life taking a final turn toward desperation and hopelessness, I trace the beginning of that process to 9/11. Things were never the same again in the world...and never the same again in MY WORLD ever again. It is a heart wrenching and sickening remembrance.
Of course today, life is so different for me then it was then but as I was enjoying a quiet, peaceful round my mind wandered back to that terrible day and those terrible times that followed. It almost seems like it has been one tragedy after another since then. The Towers coming down, nearly 3,000 people dead with 6,00 wounded, the war in Afghanistan and Iraq (War Against Terror) with so many dead and wounded American and Coalition Soldiers. And finally we have the awful economic trouble our country is still experiencing. It's been a Hellish, almost Biblically Troubled Time for our world and especially our country...
But now we have to accept that it is our reality...that people actually want to kill us and bring our country to it's knees. It isn't empty sounding Cold War rhetoric...NO, it's truly our reality today and the TRUTH...PEOPLE out there in the world want to harm us because we don't believe in the same religion they do. May GOD help us all...I can't imagine a Creator who would want us KILLING each other in HIS NAME.... over a difference of opinion. No, NO...I won't accept that...what ever happened to grace, to forgiveness?
I find it odd that I now believe....that I came to actually believe, to be a FOLLOWER of CHRIST at this particular time and place. It isn't a coincidence...I think NOT! But I am thankful I do believe today because I no longer feel hopeless...like I did for several YEARS after 9/11/2001. I guess it is easier for me to believe and accept that there is HOPE for this world if I could personally be saved like have been in recent years.
I no longer just FEAR anything and everything. Sure, I can be afraid but I no longer walk around feeling like I'm being HUNTED like I used to. No today I feel safe because I am saved!
