September 11, 2016

September 11th

Today marks the 15th memorial of September 11th. On this day in 2001, it seemed like the world changed for the worse. To those who may scoff at this post because of other atrocities that happened in other countries before then, kindly note that I am NOT discounting them. But this was the first time in my life that I became really aware of terrorism.

It's not like I lived in complete ignorance before then. I was simply a happy-go-lucky girl in college, traveling between the US and Holland where my family lived at the time. In fact my sister and I had barely been back from Den Haag for a couple of weeks when this notable act of terrorism occured.

I was in class, and somehow campus seemed empty that morning. I wasn't sure why but there was a weird feeling in the air. We got out of class and headed to our hangout spot - the cafeteria which had a pool room (we spent countless hours there). A friend rushed in looking frantic, saying she needed to talk to someone in New York because there had been a bomb. We thought she was joking so we just laughed and pretty much ignored her.

Not too long afterwards, my parents called and desperately asked where we were. They told us 2 planes from our city - Boston - had been hijacked and the US was under attack! They told us to rush home and stay home. We were scared but quickly packed up to go home. A couple of our friends left with us.

There was a lot of traffic on the roads. Confusion everywhere. Phone networks jammed as we tried to contact our family members who lived in New York. What was usually a 20 minute drive home took 2 hours. We finally got to our apartment and watched in horror as we saw what had unfolded a few hours before.

We couldn't believe what we were seeing on TV. We were shocked and watched in disbelief. We cried and cried. It seemed like the whole world was under attack. There was a sense of despair in the air. Where there more attacks coming? Why did this happen? Were we safe? 

It seems as if the world changed on that day. Again, I am not diminishing anything that happened before then or that has happened since then. Nigeria. France. Turkey. Kenya. Belgium. Syria. These days it seems to be endless. 

I read a verse earlier today and some of the words struck me. In conclusion to one of his letters, Paul said - and I've paraphrased for emphasis...

Thanks for reading.

4 comments:

  1. Great post, Berry! It's crazy to think it's already been 15 years...wow.

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    1. Thank you. I still remember it like it was yesterday! Really crazy.

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  2. I remember that day vividly. My parents worked in NYC at the time and it was confusion everywhere. I couldn't make calls; all the phones were down. Things really changed that day.

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    1. OMG, I would have gone out of my mind with worry!

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