What I Have Learned

 As I place this journal entry, I am watching a documentary, "Remembering 9/11. Today is the 10th anniversary of the day the Twin Towers were hit by two jet liners, the Pentagon was hit by a plane, and another flight crashed in Pennsylvania that was headed at the White House. It was a horrific day.  I could not believe my eyes as I watched from my classroom in Grain Valley, Missouri.  A plane, a jet liner plowed into the second tower of the Trade Center.  Minutes later, I watched in total disbelief as those towers came down.  

Then it was disbelief.  Today, it is with a greater knowledge of exactly what I learned from that day:

1. We are a country filled with heroes.  There were many people who laid down their lives to save those of others. They did not run out of those buildings; they ran into to them. They put their lives on the line for others.

2. I live  in a wonderful country.  I am honored to be a citizen of the United States of America. 

3.  I am blessed beyond measure.  My children and grandchildren live within five miles from my home, and not a week goes by that I don’t see them.  I am blessed.

4.  There are people who would see this country destroyed and use any means to meet their objective. Evil exists and I have seen it with my own eyes.  

5.  Nothing will ever be the same.  Not for the families that lost their loved ones and not for me.  Our way of life came under attack ten years ago today.  Innocent men, women, and children died that day.  It was senseless, but it happened.  It still makes me cry to think about it, and I was sixteen hundred miles away from the devastation. That day was not the end. I know that something like this could happen again.  For now, I live in the new normal.

6.   Never leave home without saying goodbye and I love you.  Before 9/11, Mike would slip quietly out of the house before me.  He was careful not to disturb my sleep, but today he wakes me, and I him to say I love you and see you this evening.  

7.  While many people died that day, many lived.  

8.  Experiencing something of this magnitude and not learning something is a tragedy.

9. God was with us through it all. We never stood alone and we never will.

10. I will never forget. I will always remember that awful day and the lessons learned from it. 

Ten years have passed.  My life was changed.  Those images and the senselessness of it all are still pressed into my mind.  I can tell you exactly where I was, what I saw, and how I felt.  But now, I can tell you all I’ve learned from that day. 

Lora