Remember

This post comes a little late but I've been thinking about it for weeks

but I wanted to get caught up with my other posts before posting new ones.

 

10 years ago today I was sitting in my living room reading a book before class. It was 6:30 in the morning and I was up early because my room was dirty and I had to get up to clean it. My dad called the house and told me to turn on the news. He was at the church where he had driven my sister to seminary that morning.

I turned on the TV and saw the towers. I watched the replay as the 2nd plane hit the towers.  I gasped out loud. I remember not being able to catch my breath. I didn't understand what was happening. I was a 12 year-old 7th grader with limited world experience. I knew, in an abstract sense,  that bad things happened. That there were people that made these bad things happen.

I was sick all day. At school, everyone seemed to me moving in a fog. I remember being in line for lunch when someone popped their chip bag and it sounded kind of like a gun shot. Everyone screamed and I ducked to the ground. Some people laughed. I remember wanting to cry.

The world didn't make sense after that. The idea that there were people in the world that would kill people simply because they were American shook me.

All those lives lost in the initial attack and those of the brave men and women who charged in to help will not go unremembered. 

I was listening to this song on the way home from San Jose a couple of weeks ago and it hit me. In this twisted world, we need to stand together. United we stand. Love one another. Be excellent to each other.