Ten Years Ago Today–and Today

September 11, 2001.

9/11 is one of those moments where most people can remember what they were doing when they first heard the news.

Ten years ago today, I was homeless. Not on-the-streets homeless, but between homes, staying with my family in an extended stay hotel. I first heard the news about the first plane on the car radio, as I was driving our laundry down the street to a nearby laundromat. The laundromat had a television, so as I (hurriedly) did the laundry, I watched in horror as the drama continued to unfold. By the time I was finished, the Pentagon had been hit, and we all knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that America was under attack.

I got back to the hotel, woke up The Director and The Wild One, and turned on the television just in time to watch the first tower fall to the ground. Then the second one a short time later.

As I watched those towers fall, I remembered the feeling of helplessness and grief, wondering how many people we had just watched die. (Now, of course, we know how many.)

The whole day was pretty much spent the same way–our eyes glued to the television, watching the towers fall over and over again, like a recurring nightmare. All I wanted to do was stop watching, but I couldn’t pull my eyes from the screen. It was like our brains were in denial and shock, and we had to watch it over and over just to process what really had happened that day.

We only left the hotel for meals, and that in itself was a surreal experience.  Our hotel was in the landing path for the Tulsa International Airport, and we were used to hearing jets flying overhead every few minutes. Today–silence. All aircraft grounded. All over the country. No jets landing or taking off. All week long we were stunned not only by the silence of the skies, but also by the lack of white streaks from the jets that regularly criss-crossed our skies at cruising altitude.

It’s pretty amazing the everyday things you don’t notice, that you DO notice when they aren’t there.

Never in my life, and never since, have I felt the uncertainty of life like I did during that time. Not only to watch the most horrific terrorist attack in history, but to watch it while having no permanent dwelling place of our own, our belongings in storage, our future uncertain–it almost felt like the very ground beneath us could open up and swallow us, like we had no firm foothold. No one to trust but God.

Of course nothing I experienced came close to the horrors experienced by the victims,  the people who were in New York that day, or the Pentagon, or Flight 93. But the event no doubt touched us all in some way, and life would never be the same.

So now it’s ten years later. The war that began that day is not over. As I write this, the government is pursuing leads of a “credible threat” of terrorists who might want to blow up car bombs in New York and/or Washington on the anniversary of 9/11. But thus far, there has not been a major terrorist attack on American soil since that day–and life has gone on, even though we felt like it wouldn’t.

Ten years ago today, I was homeless, watching the horrors of 9/11 from a hotel television. What am I doing this morning, ten years later?

I’m officiating a wedding ceremony.

Life does go on.

So what about you? What were you doing ten years ago today?

And what are you doing today?