I can remember laying in my bed, in my college apartment, watching as my roommates were getting ready for class when the phone rang and it was my mom telling me that there had been a plane crash into the World Trade Center.
The first thing I thought was that it must have been an accident. I imagined something must have gone wrong with the plane!
As I was on the phone, I told my roommates to go turn on our tiny 13 inch television in the living room so that we could watch the news, when a second airplane hit the second tower!
Our country was under an attack.
things would never be the same.
13 years have flashed before our eyes. I look at my children (ages 10,8, and 5) and realize that they do not know a life without terrorism and war. Our kids do not know what it is like to live without Homeland Security.
It's always a humbling feeling to explain to a child what happened on September 11, 2001.
I imagine, as a child, it must feel the same way it feels when I hear about President Kennedy being assassinated, I wasn't born, but the people who were, remember exactly where they were and what they were doing.
We can't understand the logistics.
Why are we hated so much?
In the eyes of a child, it's even harder to imagine the hatred that is aimed toward us.
"Maybe, if they knew our family, maybe they would like America!?" said one of my kids.
The answer is, we don't know why the hatred for us has boiled over for them!
What we can know is that our God is bigger than terrorism, bigger than war, bigger than hate, bigger than violence and threats.
We can trust that God is compassionate and grieves with us. God is a peaceful God and a God that comforts.
We can have faith, we can have hope and we can have love... and I think that they are stronger than any terrorist group.
As parents, we don't have to have the answers, when we can point our children to God and direct their hearts to a trusting relationship with Him!
"We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love."
1 Corinthians 13:12-13 The Message Version
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