old journal entries 2002 A.D. ...

09-11-02

September 11 will always be a day that stirs deep emotions within me. I remember vividly every movement of that morning. The most vivid memory I have of that horrific day was when I was holding my tree month old daughter, Aly, in my arms while watching the second tower collapse into a cloud of billowing smoke. I remember the terror I felt in my bones a I cradled her in my arms…the thought, “What have I done bringing an innocent child into this kind of world?” I was stunned, stupefied…still.

However…I remember the first time I heard of the story of the flight that went down in Pennsylvania…I was bolstered and taken to places of courage, valor and honor. Imagine yourself there…what would you have done? In a matter of moments, something this man said, no, something this man was turned a flight of passengers into a band of warriors. I wish I could have been there…to hear the passion, to see the eyes of sacrifice, to watch a man in a suit transform into a Point man for changing a part of his world. And did he ever change it…have you ever paused to ask yourself what they stopped from happening simply because thy laid their lives down? It’s amazing what a person will do when they know that they’re going to die anyway. 

Think about that…

If we really truly believed (not just giving intellectual assent to the facts) that we were going to die and that eternity awaits us with open arms…would we not lay down our lives more than we do? Would we not give up the insatiable thirst for human approval, temporary recognition and whimpering pleasures? Yet these things bind us and hold us captive for the good part or our days…we don’t truly believe we’re going to die. Believe is proven through fire. I once heard it passion defined this way…“The degree of difficulty one endures to achieve the goal.” How true.
So as we remember the lives lost…may we not let them die in vain…but honor their deaths with our lives. It is not the critic who matters…only the one who is in the arena…spilling blood, excreting sweat, and shedding tears for the one who did so on our behalf…there is not greater life to be lived.