I will never forget the day America met Satan.
I was in highschool.
I remember the absolute horror on the teacher's faces.
I didn't know the seriousness of the situation at the time. But I knew enough to know that if my elders were worried, I should be too.
They turned the intercom on in the classrooms.
They turned on the television in every classroom.
They scattered to make arrangements incase our school was attacked.
It was as if time around us stopped except in New York and D.C.
I remember that no one really knew what was happening yet, only that it wasn't over.
Were we next? Was it going to be city after city.
People were glued to the screen.
Some were frozen, some were crying, and some were panicking.
Every American remembers...
What they were doing...
Where they were at...
And what they felt in that moment.
I remember one thing very vividly...
I overheard an adult say "oh my God" there are children and babies in that building!"
I gasped. I thought to myself oh no I wonder which part of the building? I hope they are OK!
Then another plane hit!
Then the building collapsed.
Then more planes crashed.
I couldn't believe it.
I felt sick.
I had never felt such sadness and despair in my entire life up to this point.
I had someone older then me say to me once.....
That I wasn't really old enough to really know about 9/11
Well I think I can speak for my generation when I say that we saw satan that day. That is the day my generation realized what true fear felt like.. That event caused a ripple of events in our lives. Some good and some bad. The truth is we never saw life the same again. We never saw war the same way again. The way we processed our emotions changed. The way we treated people changed. The decisions we made after that point...changed.
I saw good after that...but I saw some bad too. Some of my peers wanted unity, some of them wanted revenge.
I went to see friend's military graduations because they wanted to fight for a country they believed in.
But I also saw Americans with middle East decent get bullied.
But I also saw people of every race and every religion and every color come together.
It didn't matter who we voted for.
It didn't matter what age we were.
All that mattered was what we knew from that day.
Yes.... Some very evil people did some very evil deeds for the devil that morning of 9/11/2001
Evil like that only comes from hell.
EVIL SET OUT TO DESTROY, KILL, AND SEPERATE GOD'S PEOPLE.
Satan didn't just attack my Country that day. He attacked my brothers and sisters in Christ. He attacked my elders, my friends, my family, and my peers.
That evil took people I love to war and they never came back.
But most of all he attacked my generation.
He used us.
All of us.
Teenagers don't process emotions the way children or adults do
It. Traumatized us.
It broke us.
It changed the way we saw government.
It made us question our own God.
So here we are 20 years later.
Here I am as a mom trying to explain to my young kids how evil like that can actually exist.
Here I am explaining to them my version of events without traumatizing them.
What happend that day 20 yrs ago has no clean version. Thousands died. People jumped out windows because that was their only option.
So I chose to tell them the truth. But I put emphasis on the heroes behind it. The pride our country had at that time. ..and I make it clear that God was with all of us that day. He was in every hero that risked their lives. He was in every mother hat kissed her baby at night.He was in every soldier that died or lived. He was in every fire fighter that went back in the building while everyone was running out. He was in every police officer with ash covering their body.
So every year on September 11th. I make sure we say a prayer. A prayer For the living families of the lost, for the heroes that did God's work and for a generation that never recovered from it.
And every year since.
