Today

What an emotional day.  

I chose not to watch any of the 9/11 10th Anniversary coverage this weekend.  Well, the actual footage of that day, anyway.  There is nothing they could show me that I haven't seen a hundred times already, that we all haven't seen a hundred times already.  For years following September 11, 2001, on each anniversary, the media drowned us in images from that horrific day, crying out, "REMEMBER REMEMBER REMEMBER".  As though any of us could ever forget.  What's more important than us remembering is that we tell our children and our grandchildren about that day, why it happened, what happened and what we're going to do to keep it from happening again.

I did watch a little of NBC's coverage of the memorial services in New York this morning as I was getting ready for church.  I heard stories of heroes, heard names read by the children of those lost and listened to patriotic music and I cried.

I went to church and we had a beautiful memorial 9/11 service, heard about heroes like Pat Tillman, the football star turned soldier, Todd Beamer, the Flight 93 passenger whose brave "let's roll" became our battle cry and the firefighters who saved the lady in the stairwell, who incidentally passed away in January and those same firefighters attended her funeral saying it was the least they could do, after what she did for them.  They believed her to be their guardian angel because had they not stopped to rescue her in that stairwell, they would have been killed when the building collapsed.  There are the 343 firefighters who refused to back down, refused to get out even after they were ordered to, the paramedics who kept going back and back again, desperate to help save somebody, the police officers who even though they were terrified, stayed to try to control the chaos and try to bring some kind of order to what was unlike anything they'd ever experienced before.

We took of the Lord's Supper and had some beautiful music.  The Lord blessed us with a wonderful, spirit-filled service.  And I cried.

I went and spent a couple of hours with my love, sharing with him what I'd just experienced at church and how I couldn't wait to go tonight to see the movie Brother Andy had planned for us, The Cross and The Towers, a documentary about four steel crosses that were found in the WTC rubble.

I went tonight and saw the movie and I cried.  It was a great story of hope and promise and trust and I loved it.  It was our proof that even in our darkest day, God was with us.  Even as we all questioned, "where IS He??", He was there.  I know there are some groups that do not want it displayed at the World Trade Center site and that's their right.  We have religious freedom in this country.  But all I gotta say about that is they are missing out!  They are missing out on the greatest love story ever told.  The story of Jesus and His love for us, His constant presence in our lives. 

It even had metal wrapped around it, like His royal sash.

If that doesn't thrill your heart, it ain't beating.