My son was almost to his first birthday when this happened. Before this day became such a heart wrenching day of grief, loss, and death, it was an ordinary, beautiful blue skied day on a crisp fall day, September 11, 2001.

8:46am – Flight 11 hits the North Tower

9:03am – Flight 175 hits the South Tower

9:37am – Flight 77 hits the Pentagon

9:59am – The South Tower falls

10:03am – Flight 93 is taken over by history changing passengers and crashes in a field in Pennsylvania

10:28am – The North Tower falls

Today, every year, I reconnect with my amazing coworker and friend who was with me on this morning, 20 years ago. We were walking around our work building, on our daily break, and started wondering why all the commotion started happening.

A secretary in one of our work units had a small black and white tv, and when we looked over her shoulder, we saw a building falling to the ground. It looked like a movie, not something that had ever happened here in the US.

This day brought out the best and worst in everyone we knew. There was one ridiculously controversial conversation happening in our office. I remember this one young man in particular, who was fortunate enough to live in a country where he was allowed to openly voice his negative opinions of the whys without life threatening consequences.

None of us agreed with him, and we actually had to walk away because he was being so insensitive.

No words can ever describe how our nation united that day. The day after we digested what actually happened, we were all Americans. We were all supporting each other, hugging, praying, sharing, helping others,….

The overall feeling was indescribable. I pray we can return to this without it taking a horrendous tragedy like this one to come back together.

I won’t get into the specifics, but I pray today’s memorials help remind everyone who lives here in the US how blessed we actually are to live in a country where we do have freedoms.

God knows we don’t always agree with each other, but typically we aren’t killed for our religious beliefs, for our personal opinions, or for any other human condition that we cannot control.

Never forget the lessons God lets us live through. There’s a reason we’re here today, all of us.

God I pray you make it clear to each of us that you’ve given us all a gift, and I pray we get out there and use it to support each other. I pray it doesn’t continue to take extreme tragedy like September 11th to bring us all together.