DO YOU REMEMBER

WHERE YOU WERE....SEPTEMBER 11 2001...THIS SEPTEMBER 11 2012?

And what you were doing? 

I had left home to take the van to Washington to have my tires rotated.  When I walked into the waiting room the first plane had just hit.

I just stood (all the chairs were full) and watched, unbelieving, and crying, along with all the others at that particular tire shop.   The world that we knew had changed in the blink of an eye.

I had a couple of friends that were on a cruise ship on the way back to New York.  They couldn't dock.  They were not told why.  They could not contact home, nor could they be contacted.

I never did run my errands that day - just headed home as soon as the tires were rotated.  I didn't do anything for several days but watch TV.  The eeriness of no planes flying overhead was strange.  The awareness of what was happening was hard to cope with.  Life would never the same. Again.

I remember, when I was just a child, coming home from Church on Sunday December 7th.  My Dad always turned the radio on for the news upon arriving home.. 
 
We had been attacked.  Once again all we did was listen to the news reports,  and once again life would never be the same.

I remember standing in my living room ironing clothes with our little black and white TV on, and seeing first-hand the assassination of President Kennedy.  Once again life would never be the same.

How do we cope with these tragedies?  We pick up the pieces, learn to live with what has happened and try to put our every-day lives back together. 

Tragedies have happened since the beginning of time.  The world is still here, revolving, nature is still doing her thing.  Neither one stopped because of some awful sequence of events.  I guess we have taken a page from their book, we pick up the pieces and try to put our lives back together in to some semblance of normalcy.

One thing is certain.  We NEVER FORGET.  We learn.  We continue to do our best.  We live our lives to the best of our abilities, trusting that God will see us through, and He will have mercy on those involved in the tragedies.  Yes, they are tragedies.  Life is not a bowl of cherries, or a bed of roses.  Life is hard. 

But we survive.  We make better lives for ourselves.  We laugh, and work, and play, and build, and learn.  We continue to do our best.  That is all anyone can ask of us - that we do our best.

So stop a moment, take the time to remember, to say a prayer, the move onward and upward, doing the very best that you can.

God Bless.