Eclectic Amateur

9/11 Remembered

Here is something I wrote in the immediate aftermath:

An Ordinary Week

(looking back on September 11, 2001)



Thank you, God, for an ordinary week.



While there were reports of terror and death

  all around me, you have given me the gift

  of an ordinary week.



I went to work and did my job.  There was satisfaction

  and frustration and politics and cameraderie.

I came home to my family.  Some joy, some tedium,

  some being driven crazy by each other.  You know

  how families can be.

I helped with the dishes, did some work around

  the house, folded the laundry.

The kids, in between being wonderful, challenged

  and frustrated us.  They even needed

  some disciplining.

I wondered how I was going to get all the bills

  taken care of.

My wife smiled at me.

We fought a little bit, but nothing that didn't

  pass and leave the love behind.

I went to church on Sunday and worshipped,

  distracted by the squirming and questioning

  of lively children.



It was an ordinary week.



We had a little bit out of the ordinary.  Josh

  was upset because we didn't get a newspaper.

  He likes the weather maps.

But the front page wouldn't have been ordinary,

  and he's such a sensitive child.

He won't even pray his "special prayers" at night,

  because he didn't want to speak what he'd heard

  about New York and Washington, D.C.

  even to God.

David will pray about it.  He prays every night 

  for the airplanes and the buildings and the firefighters

  and that the planes will get down safely.

  I never have the heart to tell him

  that they won't.

My wife and I are in disbelief, and a little shock,

  that a building where we spent a week together

  is now a pile of rubble.

We hold each other a little tighter.

And we were relieved to find that our friend

  who lives and works around the Beltway

  had his flight on the ground a few hours

  before the terror began.



So it was not entirely ordinary.



But I am only an ordinary man

  with the ordinary responsiblities of life.

I had no terror of waiting for the awful call

  (or worse, no call at all)

  regarding loved ones in the wrong building.

I had no responsiblity for coworkers in flight

  or where they might be stranded

  if the planes were still in the air at all.

I had no position of ministry

  where the grieving and questioning would come

  and ask the unanswerable.

I had no position of public office

  where more wisdom than can be humanly borne

  is demanded.

I am only an ordinary man

  experiencing an ordinary week.



Thank you, Lord, for this most precious treasure

  of an ordinary week.