September 11, 2001. There was no social media. No Instagram. No Twitter. No Facebook. The general population wasn’t all striving to be seen and heard by large audiences. Influencer? That wasn’t even a word (to be frank, it still really isn’t). The news wasn’t nearly as polarized as it is now, nineteen years later in 2020. Text messaging on a cell phone was only available if you had a Blackberry, and honestly, if texting were a thing, I didn’t own a cell phone that had that option for another two years.

It was a beautiful day in Highland Heights, Kentucky. I’m sure that as I walked that morning to my 8:00 a.m. Astronomy class at Northern Kentucky University from my on-campus apartment that I was probably pondering why I chose a morning class again rather than considering how nice the weather was that day, however, as I recall the memories, I remember that the sky was full of morning sunshine and minimal clouds. It was likely a little breezy as it always was near the top of that hill that overlooked the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, a mere seven-ish miles away. I was a little less than a month into my sophomore year of college. A month and a few days into being a proud 19 year old. Fortunate. Insecure. Imaginative. Hopeful. Naive. Sensitive. Conscientious. A deep thinker. A loud laugher.

Sitting at my desk as class was nearing its end, my teacher put on the TV. What we saw was live news coverage. A plane had just crashed into one of the Twin Towers in NYC a few minutes prior. We all sat silent, confused, a little stunned and maybe even skeptical. We stayed in class a little after 9, and I watched from my concrete building a thousand miles away as a second plane flew into the second tower. An unthinkable and devastating plane crash.

I remember feeling slightly disconnected, yet deeply moved at the same time. It’s all the way in New York City; The Big Apple; a place I’d never traveled. My brain began to think about the people there and their families; quickly moving to my own family, and whether I knew anyone there or not. Eventually, I left class to make my three minute walk to the Career Development Center where I was a student worker. My co-workers in the room were glued to the coverage on a tiny box TV that someone had brought in to watch.

The news continued. The Pentagon was hit. One by one, the Twin Towers collapsed within hours. Chaos. Reports of terrorism. These were not isolated tragic accidents? No. Rather, intentional, planned attacks. What!? My bosses allowed me to go back to my dorm room. A foggy, unsettling type of shock was moving in among everyone on that pristine, sunny day in my little world at NKU.

I can still picture myself walking out of work. It was quiet on campus as I took the ten minute walk back to my apartment. I remember looking up into the clear blue sky as I walked a little differently than I had earlier that morning. A faint feeling of surreal fear washed over me. I remember thinking “My mom has a cousin that works in D.C., I wonder if she’s okay.” Thoughts began running through my head. Would that plane overhead fall from the sky? We are close to an airport; are the airports safe? Are these planes and helicopters I hear going somewhere different now? Are we going to war? Did I remember how to “duck and cover” like I saw in all those history classes in high school? Where were my nearest escape routes if something happened right that moment? Did I even bring the cell phone with me to class? This is definitely an emergency use for those 250 minutes. I wonder if this is what it feels like to live in one of those countries where bombs fall on a daily basis? Do people and families fear like this regularly? This is horrible.

For the first time in my life, I realized how small my world really was and how little I really knew about the world at large. The lyrics of that late nineties Baz Luhrmann song about wearing sunscreen came to my mind that day: “The real troubles in your life are apt to be the things that never crossed your mind. The kind that blindside you at 4:00pm on some idle Tuesday.” It was the “some idle Tuesday” part of that song that came to mind, because 9-11-2001 happened to be an idle Tuesday. As I reviewed the lyrics for this post, I am struck two decades later with the amount of wisdom that was in that song. I recommend listening to it or reading it if you’ve never heard it before now.

As I contemplated all the posts that I saw today on all the social media avenues that didn’t exist nineteen years ago, it caused me to reflect on my nineteen years that have passed since that memory of my final teenage year in America. There were no “pray for America” hashtags and banners being placed all over the internet. Internet coverage wasn’t even everywhere in America. How quickly we forget with technology at our fingertips now that, while it might not be our lived reality, it is a reality that not all people have the internet everywhere globally still today. Even on our own soil.

In 2001, there were racial tensions happening in Cincinnati just as there are now all across the world. There were racial divides on my college campus that were clear and obvious, yet not often discussed. Why was where I lived in Woodcrest, three out of my four years on campus, nicknamed “hood-crest?” It certainly wasn’t because all the well-to-do white students and athletes were living at the back-most part of campus. The apartments with full kitchens and individual rooms allowed those of us that didn’t have the money to opt out of the expensive meal plans entirely. A systemic divide between those who had money and could afford the luxuries of “suite-style” newer living quarters and those who could not.

The past should always be something that changes us in the present and the future forever. If not, we are doomed to repeat it in different ways. The past isn’t something to dismiss and “get over.” If you are out here in America today remembering 9/11, but you are also dismissing and telling our black brothers and sisters to stop remembering slavery and to stop being outraged over the fact that they are losing their lives still in 2020 at a higher rate than any other population…I think you may need to check your heart in 2020.

The loss of life isn’t something anyone just gets over. I’d think we might be able to do better if we remember the past accurately, listen to others who are grieving in very different ways than we ourselves might grieve, and show the same compassion we share for these days we choose to memorialize and all the people we choose to honor whose individual stories we actually don’t know.

What have we as a nation become in almost two decades? A hashtag? A society of people, politicians and journalists that run our lives more like the movie Mean Girls? Are any of us actually believers in something other than our own way? If we only truly knew and understood the mercy and forgiveness of God’s grace, perhaps we could see ourselves as we really are, so that we could be humbled when we see ourselves through His eyes.

I know I don’t deserve a God as good as the One that I choose to serve, but Jesus is reason the words grace, mercy, hope, faith, and love even exist in our vocabulary today. Our Father in Heaven is witnessing each of our own individual battles and the battle in all of our nations with great compassion, because His wrath was already poured out on the lamb that was slain for you and me to come back into His presence now for such a time as this. He is not slow in keeping His promises as some understand slowness, but He is patient with each one of us, not wanting anyone to perish, but all to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9).

Nothing in life goes back to “the way it was,” because the way it was has always been good for some and worse for others. Does a tree that loses its limb in a storm ever go back to the way that it was? No. Sometimes it dies. Sometimes it remains beautifully broken. Sometimes, new growth starts because something breaks. That is the truth. That is reality of this life this side of Heaven. God allows the sun to rise on those who do evil and those who do good; the rain to fall on those who are morally right and those that oppose Him (Matthew 5:45).

What good does it do for us to remember where we were on days like today nineteen years ago, if it does not lead us to look up and in so that we may help change tomorrow?