9/11 Blue Skies
Remembering a terrible day and still giving thanks
Today the sky is a brilliant, cloudless blue, the air warm with a tinge of autumn cool coming through the sunshine. When I looked up into the late morning air, it looked a lot like it did twenty-two years ago, on September 11, 2001. That was a day that looked like heaven and ended up showing us hell.
I’ve now lived over half of my life since that day of terrible events. I was nineteen, a month from turning twenty, and a sophomore in college in a small town in Indiana. It was palpable in the air that day that something fundamental had shifted, that the world we innocent college kids had known was gone, and we had no idea what would take its place. We had woken up that morning with our daily schedules and responsibilities before us, as well as colloquial life experiences like when and what to eat for breakfast. All of a sudden, much of that was unimportant.
The other evening I started watching a documentary, 9/11: Minute By Minute, and I was struck by how clueless everyone was—the confused air traffic controllers, hesitant newscasters on the morning shows, even the fighter pilots assigned to scramble the planes. How different our plugged-in, instant-communication world is from that time, when the 24-hour news cycle was still in its early stages, live broadcasts could be quaintly boring and not pounding with unending crises. “Oh my goodness… oh my,” one newscaster said over and over again, when the second hijacked plane, shown on camera, hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center next to the smoking, smouldering mass already in the North Tower. He sounded like a relic from a bygone era, a polite, bewildered voice shocked by deliberate evil. You don’t hear that much anymore.
I remember thinking, a little worriedly but not abundantly so, how the relatively few cell phones around me couldn’t break through the call gridlock that had landlines stuck on busy. We couldn’t reliably get through to parents and family and friends because everyone else blessed to be alive was trying to do the same thing. What seemed most scary was the absence of planes in the sky, the eerie silence of flights suddenly grounded. We knew so little about what was happening that no one could get on a plane to travel for days. Although I take that back—occasionally we would hear a plane, and it would be a military plane, streaking high and purposefully miles above us. This only reiterated the unknowns before us.
I keep thinking how little we knew that day, and yet how we didn’t expect much different, because we still lived in a society where ubiquitous screens hadn’t changed how we react and think about things that happen. Sure, we were worried and anxious, incredibly so. The rumor mill was rampant, but we knew that’s what it was. Time would reveal actual events and actual threats. We knew we had to wait, and just wait, to find out news that could be reliable. We didn’t have any other options. Patience was forced on a lot of us. Looking back, I am glad for that silver lining.
Learning to live with uncertainty is a skill and a gift. I am thankful for older people in my life who possess patience and levelheadedness when everyone else seems to be losing theirs, to borrow from Kipling. I also recognize that this steadiness has come through hard, often excruciatingly hard, experience.
I pray for the families and friends of those who died in the terrorist attacks that day because 9/11, in some ways, will always be 2001 to them. Those of us who were removed from the day’s horrors should still remember how tenuous beautiful skies and regular days can be, and we should give thanks to Him who orders all things and keeps us, as Psalm 116 reminds us.
I love the Lord, because He has heard
My voice and my supplications.
2 Because He has inclined His ear to me,
Therefore I will call upon Him as long as I live.3 The pains of death surrounded me,
And the pangs of Sheol laid hold of me;
I found trouble and sorrow.
4 Then I called upon the name of the Lord:
“O Lord, I implore You, deliver my soul!”5 Gracious is the Lord, and righteous;
Yes, our God is merciful.
6 The Lord preserves the simple;
I was brought low, and He saved me.
7 Return to your rest, O my soul,
For the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.8 For You have delivered my soul from death,
My eyes from tears,
And my feet from falling.
9 I will walk before the Lord
In the land of the living.
10 I believed, therefore I spoke,
“I am greatly afflicted.”
11 I said in my haste,
“All men are liars.”12 What shall I render to the Lord
For all His benefits toward me?
13 I will take up the cup of salvation,
And call upon the name of the Lord.
14 I will pay my vows to the Lord
Now in the presence of all His people.15 Precious in the sight of the Lord
Is the death of His saints.16 O Lord, truly I am Your servant;
I am Your servant, the son of Your maidservant;
You have loosed my bonds.
17 I will offer to You the sacrifice of thanksgiving,
And will call upon the name of the Lord.18 I will pay my vows to the Lord
Now in the presence of all His people,
19 In the courts of the Lord’s house,
In the midst of you, O Jerusalem.Praise the Lord!