9/11--10 years ago

Everyone has a response to the question, "Where were you on 9/11?" I do, too.

Sometimes the question is more specific in "Where were you when you heard about the first plane?" or "Where were you when the second plane hit?"

Most people begin their story with a brief explanation of their morning. Then continue with where they found themselves when the world came to a staggering halt standing in front of television sets for the rest of the day.

Over the last ten years I've answered such questions. In fact, I did yesterday morning in our Sunday School class. But I rarely tell the whole story of my morning. Short blips just don't lend themselves to a long story, and honestly, a group setting isn't the place.

My 9/11/2001 was different and so my story of that day is too. Ten years ago, as the day was unfolding, I realized how different--how incongruent--my experience was. While the world was reeling from utter chaos that morning, I found myself swimming in God's goodness and grace.

That Tuesday morning I woke up in my apartment in Columbia. I was a senior in college and looking forward to a morning of being a kindergarten assistant at a local elementary school. I was going to graduate in a few short months and recently had made the decision to continue my education and become a teacher.

I was also in love. The week before, the Tuesday morning before, in fact, I had flown home from Oregon with a lot of my mind. Noah had asked me to give us another chance--a year and 2000 miles later. He had told me he still loved me. I took a week to ponder, and that morning, I woke up ready to say, I love you, too, let's make this once very young relationship that ended begin again in a crazy long distance effort. And I did. That morning. Instead of turning on the Today show like I normally would, I sat in my room emailing my future husband, asleep and on a two hour time delay, to say I love you.

Running a little late and feeling excited, I threw open my front door and gasped at what was on the stoop. Gasped! My cowboy boots! My prayer had been ANSWERED! My boots had been gone for months......sitting in the basement of the parents of a guy I had dated. I don't remember the exact circumstances of me not simply asking for them back, but I turned to God. Well, after I briefly considered breaking and entering when I was passing by the town on a roadtrip. Was it really breaking if the door would be unlocked as always in the small town?

I wanted them back so badly. It's unlike me to get so attached to something materialistic like that, but I had wanted cowboy boots for so long, they were long sought out, they were wore to perfection, and they were mine.

So I started praying. Often. Presenting my request to the Lord. Often.

One day, along in the summer, I remember walking from my living room to the kitchen, praying for my boots to come back, and as I walked past the bookcase, the Lord said to me, "Courtney, I heard you. Stop asking."

I think I snapped something in my neck as I looked up at these words to my spirit.

I mean, really, what does one say to the Lord in reply other than, "Ok." The boots were on His list.

And then, I open the door months later, and THERE are my cowboy boots. I could not help but dance!
The Lord brought my cowboy boots back.

I had to have been grinning shamelessly on the way to my car. What a morning!

On the way to the elementary school, I was listening to my normal country music station. The DJ's were talking about a dark plane that had hit the World Trade Center. They thought it was a UPS plane.

I went into the elementary school, worked with the five and six year old for a few hours, and then came out to head on to my internship at the American Heart Association. By then the towers had both been hit--the second one of live television with millions of Americans watching--and had both fallen. I missed it all.

Honestly, I don't remember much about how I learned of the horrors of the morning. I remember being at work and in a daze. When the grave reality began to sink in, I called my mom, working in Kansas City at Sprint. I read later the astronomical number of phone calls made to mothers that day.

I was 21 years old and astounded in the midst of chaos. I absolutely knew God was real, God was present, and God had protected me from seeing the violence. He knew me so well, He knew I needed such demonstrative fulfilled prayer THAT morning, He knew my tender heart needed protection from seeing live the horrific deaths of a plane being flown into a sky scrapper and people jumping from the burning buildings.

All day I felt the incongruency. America experiencing hatred and violence, yet knowing God was still in the business of listening and answering prayer, in being God of the realms, and the God of my every day. How could I not praise Him and seek Him while I yet grieved for our country?