I've never actually written down my 9/11 story. I should have. Even as a 16 year old girl, I knew it would live on as an important historical event and that I was witnessing something that would change my life forever. Somehow I intrinsically knew, even in high school, that one day my future children and even my grandchildren would ask me, "Where were you on September 11th?"
On 9/11 when the towers were hit, I was sitting in my AP U.S history class at McIntosh High School in Peachtree City, GA.
It was the beginning of my Junior year; I was on the Varsity Dance Team, and in fact our next performance was supposed to be to Outkast's "Bombs over Baghdad" a popular song at the time; my favorite movie was "Pearl Harbor;" I thought about being a history teacher when I grew up; I had only been one funeral in my life, my Great Grandpa Smith's; I worried about things like what to wear to school, when was I going to get my own car, and what I would be doing on the weekends with my friends. I was for the most part just your average teenager.
I remember the whispers and the vibrations of cell phones going off all around me. I remember the irony of knowing that something terrible and historic was happening right at that moment, but for some reason Mr. McDuffy, my AP U.S history teacher, wouldn't let us turn on the TV and watch. I was in U.S history, and I wasn't allowed to watch U.S history in the making!
I remember being confused, afraid, and nervous. At first nobody knew what airlines had been taken over. My dad was working, but I couldn't remember if he was just teaching at the training center in Atlanta or flying on a trip. I found out later that one of the main reasons the school made the decision not to let us watch the news was because so many of the students had parents working for Delta, and they didn't want to create an even greater panic because it was too early to know how many airlines were involved.
It wasn't until I got home from school that I was able to actually watch the attacks. I remember we were all piled up with my mom on her bed watching the news for hours and hours. I didn't know any of the September 11th victim's directly, but over the past ten years I have had the opportunity to come into contact with several individuals who loved and lost someone close to them in the attacks. They will never be forgotten. I will never forget that day.
The prophet from my church, President Thomas S. Monson, wrote an article
here in
The Washington Post about the surge in spiritually and religion in the aftermath of the attacks that has since diminished. Here are some of my favorite lines in that article...
Our Father’s commitment to us, His children, is unwavering. Indeed He softens the winters of our lives, but He also brightens our summers. Whether it is the best of times or the worst, He is with us. He has promised us that this will never change.
If there is a spiritual lesson to be learned from our experience of that fateful day, it may be that we owe to God the same faithfulness that He gives to us. We should strive for steadiness, and for a commitment to God that does not ebb and flow with the years or the crises of our lives. It should not require tragedy for us to remember Him, and we should not be compelled to humility before giving Him our faith and trust. We too should be with Him in every season.
