Where were you on 9/11?

Isn't that the question you get asked 1000 times on 9/11 each year?  Well, why shouldn't I ask you too?  Do you remember where you were and how you found out about the attacks on 9/11?

Here's my story....

I was living at home, going to community college, and had decided that morning was a skip morning.  My mom would shake her head and say "of course it was".  haha!  When I got up that morning, I got on the computer and one of my friends immediately chatted me "Have you heard about the terrorist attack?"  My response "what the heck are you talking about?"  In my very naive world I had no idea what he was talking about...terrorist attack?  Those two words don't even make sense in my head... what the heck is a terrorist?  He immediately told me to turn on the news...I did, and the rest is history...literally.  I didn't leave the TV for the rest of the day.  I saw the second plane fly into the building, watched the news anchor ask if that was a person that had just jumped from the building, and watch both buildings crumble to the ground like a sand castle.  Unreal then, and unreal now. 

The sad part of my personal story is that I never fully grasped what happened until all of the information that came out on the 10th anniversary last year.  The wide spread effect it had and still has on America.  The videos that came out last year were ones that you only see on movies...but they were real.  Real families fleeing from their apartments, people calling their families not knowing what was going on, watching dust clouds envelop people and cars on the streets.  Unreal.  That is the only word I know how to describe it, and yet, it was so real.  

So today, when I see people post "We Remember" or "Never Forget", I will remember what I was doing that morning 11 years ago, but I will also remember how, in the days to follow, the people of our country united together as one.  That on this day, in this month, and for months after, our country loved one another in spite of religion, politics, or race.  That we stood proud to be Americans in the land of the free and the home of the BRAVE.  And that at the end of the day, we are all connected by a greater power.  

So I say "NEVER FORGET" today (and every day) the compassion we shared, the hands we extended, and the prayers we lifted for each other, and "ALWAYS REMEMBER" we can be like this everyday. 

“A song of ascents. I lift up my eyes to the mountains— where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.” Psalm 121:1-2 NIV