10 years ago today...

the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon happened. Our country's never been the same since. I read the cover article in People magazine this week. It interviewed 10 boys and girls who lost their dads in the 9/11 attacks. These children never knew their fathers because their mothers were still pregnant with them when their dads were killed. There was a kind of sobriety in these children's eyes that revealed a sorrowful burden they have born for almost 10 years. They interviewed their mothers, too. To not only have to endure the rest of a pregnancy, give birth to a fatherless child, and then be forced to raise that child with all the courage you can muster day in and day out is unthinkable for me. I don't know what I would do without Joe, but these women had to face the horrible truth of life without daddy.

Sometimes, when I tell people about the brain hemorrhage I experienced several years ago (even sparing them many of the painful details), they are incredulous. "Well, I couldn't go through that. I'd be screaming and kicking if I had to spend two weeks in ICU. I'd loose my mind." I think, "Do you think I had a choice? I had to go through it! I had no choice but to patiently endure." It's amazing to learn what we're really made of and that we are so much stronger than we think. These mothers had to summon their courage and face life without a husband and father of their children. What a life! What a testimony! I wonder how many times they wondered how God could be glorified in the midst of such despair and darkness. I learn the heart of God is so deep at these times because when we feel we cannot despair no longer, God is longer still. There is no limit to how many times we can bang our fists on the chest of God. He is always deeper, longer, wider than our minds can fathom.

Psalm 46

¹ God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
² Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
³ though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.

⁴ There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
⁵ God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.
⁶ Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;
he lifts his voice, the earth melts.

⁷ The LORD Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.

⁸ Come and see what the LORD has done,
the desolations he has brought on the earth.
⁹ He makes wars cease
to the ends of the earth.
He breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.
¹⁰ He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”