A day to remember

Gosh. It's september 11 again...one of a only a handful of memorable days, in my life at least. I still remember exactly what I was doing when the planes crashed into the twin towers in NYC. At the time, I was a sophomore in college at the University of Montana. It was really early in the morning and I woke up to my phone ringing and me cursing because I didn't think I set my alarm on my phone. Obviously, I was planning to sleep in through my first class that morning! But, no. It was my mom calling to tell me to get up and turn on the television. Actually, the first words out of her mouth were "WE'RE BEING BOMBED!" I was like, "MOM...REALLY? It's too early to be melodramatic." But, no again. She wasn't overreacting because we were really being bombed. I quickly hung up the phone and ran downstairs to the only place I knew where there was a tv...my head RA's room. And for the rest of the day, I (along with ten or so random people) sat on her floor and watched the horror unfold, thinking "How could this happen?"

Looking back, I wasn't deeply affected about the situation until the next few days and weeks when the death toll kept climbing and the number of people still missing in the rubble was unfathomable. My heart ached for all those people who had missing family members or had loved ones who filled the morgues of the big apple. Of all cities, my favorite city in the USA got hit.

And now on the 7th anniversary of this terrible day, it is amazing to see how far the city of New York has come to rebuild herself from the spiritual catastrophe it and its people endured. Somtimes we take for granted the blessed life we live here in the US. Although we are mourning for all those lives we have lost since the attack of 9/11, here and abroad, we sometimes forget of the many countries who are in constant turmoil on their own soil. One of my professors joked the other day (after feeling after shocks from implosions done on a nearby construction site) that if she were in Iran, she would instinctively be taking shelter. For the majority of us, we laugh at the joke wholeheartedly because we really don't know what it is like to live a life of that kind of fear. The fear of war and constant violence wears on people and their souls. And even though it is selfish for me to say it out loud (or at least in writing), I am very happy to live here in the US, where at least I feel safe and where I don't have to take cover from bombings or hide from guerrila warfares. Yes, we have been bombed by terrorists, but it is nowhere near what some other countries experience.

And as I end this blog, I send up a prayer to God to bless all those people who have been affected by this tragedy...a tragedy that has affected us all as Americans.