Growing, Changing, Remembering

I perused the Shafferland blog archives to see if I've written about 9/11 every year, and I was quite surprised to see I've actually not written about it more times than I did make it the subject of a post.

It surprised me because 9/11 was a life-marker for me. I did not personally know a single person who died that day, nor did I know someone who knew someone who knew someone lost or injured.

But the day marked me - as I'm sure it marked you.

This was the Bekah of 2001:

I was every bit as unsure of myself and naïve as those pictures would indicate. In some ways, I was wise beyond my years, but in even more ways, I was dreadfully immature with so much growing to do.

That day (as was true for many) became the swift kick into growing up. It provided more questions than answers, but it pushed me to realize that the neat and tidy world I had perceived was gone forever. In truth, it probably never really existed, but it did in my mind until that day.

It was the first day I ever truly felt alone.

My parents were on vacation. My roommate worked an opposite shift from mine, and she was at work that evening. My ex-boyfriend (that I still believed would one day pick me) was out of town on business. Everyone else huddled with their own family and friends, and I huddled with the Lord, and so began a new level of intimacy in our relationship.

I think this is why 9/11 every year is such a life-marking day for me. I clear my calendar, and I watch the documentaries - all of them I can find. Some of them I watch every single year, and others are new. I watch for two reasons.

First and foremost, I never want to forget the people whose stories changed forever that day. They will always matter, and I want to give them an audience. It's just a thing I want to do in their honor and memory.

Secondly, I watch them - and watch them alone - because I never want to forget what that day meant for my life, even as far removed from the actual event as I was. I want to remember how alone I felt and how God met me in that fear. I want to remember how that scared, immature, naïve girl began to grow up. I want to remember how the unknown of that day fed into the unknown of my life and how God used it to grow me.

The Bekah of 18 years later is still sometimes immature. She's still sometimes naïve. She's still sometimes scared.

But she has come so far. She is in no way the same girl she was in those first pictures you saw.

None of us are the same. That day changed each of us (who have memories of the day, anyway) in personal and unique ways.

So today I will sit and watch my documentaries. I will hear the same stories I heard last year and the year before that. I will hear new stories. I will give the people of 9/11 my ear and receive the stories they tell.

And today I will sit and remember how God changed and grew me on that day and in all the days since. He is good. Even on that hard, unspeakably tragic day, He was good. And on this day, which is equally hard and unspeakably tragic for some, He is still good.