10 years.

It’s hard to believe it has been 10 years since those towers came down.

It was as though our whole world came crashing down around us when they fell.

I was with my best friend Randall. I held her new born baby in my arms as we watched, in disbelief, as they came down. Her husband had just started law school, he was at class — but I remember how she ran to him when he got home – the image of them embracing on their front steps will always stay with me.

It happened about two weeks before I was set to go to London to pursue a master’s degree.

I was so shaken that I actually considered NOT going.

I did go.

When my mom dropped me off at JFK airport it felt like we were in some ghost town. There was practically nobody there. Fear was so pervasive the air seemed to be thick with it, as though it was actually palpable. My mom wasn’t even allowed to stand next to me on line when I checked my luggage.

I remember walking off the airplane and seeing the newspaper headlines “WAR IMMINENT”

And two days after arriving in the UK, as the world seemed to be holding it’s breath,

for the first time in this life

I clapped eyes on

the man

who would become my whole world.

11 months after first seeing him we were married.

Rumi wrote, “Move within. But don’t move the way fear makes you move.”

For me personally, September 11th can be summed up in the scripture which reads,

“To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.” Isaiah 61:3

As you and I face the challenges of these times in which we live, I want to always remember to never let fear dictate my inner movement. I don’t like to think what my life would be today if I had been too afraid to live my dreams, even in the midst of chaos and darkness.

Beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.

As Dickens wrote,

“Hope.

There’s always,

hope.”

Always!

Photo by Jan Dawson