By Donna Calvin

Every American can recall exactly what he or she was doing when the Muslim Terrorists murdered over 3000 Americans in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.  We all recall what a beautiful day it was that September morning.  The sky was a perfect blue and the humidity and temperature was just the right level for human body comfort.

I had just come down from upstairs having finished doing what every wife and mother does upstairs before coming down after her family leaves and heads off to their various destinations.  Make the beds, change the towels, pick up the socks, put them into the hampers, whatever it takes to make everything look neat and clean.  I punched the start button on the computer and began setting it up to listen to a conservative talk show host over the Internet who would be on at that time, shortly before nine in the morning.  Michael Reagan was on and all of a sudden he announced that a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center.  I ran over to the TV set and turned on Fox News and there it was, a short time later, a video of the plane crashing into the Tower.

The reports were conflicting.  It was thought to be a small plane, no it was a large one, no a small one with only a few windows, no it was a huge passenger jet.  Every American was glued to their TV sets.  Then we all saw the unthinkable, the second jet crash intentionally into the other Tower!

I was on the phone with my quasi-adopted daughter, Ann.  She said I exclaimed, “We’re under attack!”  We were both crying.

I call her my quasi-adopted daughter because I love her like she’s my daughter, but she is my real daughter’s best friend.  She lived with us for a few years when her family told her shortly after her graduation from high school that she was no longer permitted to live in their house.

But the worst still hadn’t happened before our eyes on TV.  It was only minutes later when the first Tower collapsed.  I recall just about that time a telemarketer called me.  I was aghast!  I tried to be as polite as I could, wrestling with the lump in my throat, thinking as the newscasters were suggesting that 50,000 were in that tower, and that we had just witnessed the death of 50,000 fellow Americans and here some person in an office, who knows where, was trying to sell me something.

My son was less than a mile from home at his own business.  He was ready to come pick me up and head out to the country where it might be safer than being in our city.  We knew that another plane had crashed into the Pentagon and one was headed towards Cleveland Hopkins International.  Since we live in the fly-over section of airspace that happens to be under that, we knew that the airplane that refused to land was somewhere in Cleveland’s airspace, but we didn’t know where.  It was an eerie feeling knowing that condemned people, being held hostage, who would soon make a plunge into some tall, important building in theU.S.A.was flying overhead.

I remember praying.  I have no idea what I prayed, ten years is a long time, but the prayers I was saying just kept running through my mind and softly being whispered through my lips.

I called my husband at work to see if they knew about the attack and he said, they did and were all gathered around a small TV set.

The Mayor of Cleveland Michael White came on TV to talk about the plane they had in lockdown at Cleveland Hopkins which, of course, was not the plane that ended up in the field in Pennsylvania.  There were so many conflicting stories on that I didn’t know what to believe, except one thing!  I knew life in America was never, ever going to be the same again.

My son was the first person to say those words to me, but I had already thought them.  I still had no idea how drastically life would change for all of us.  We used to go to New Hampshire every autumn and would drive up north, cross into Canada, with a hand wave from the boarder patrol, exiting the U.S.A and reentering with the same friendly hand waves.  We marveled at how friendly the boarders were and how free we were in theU.S.A.  How different it is now.

A few years after 9-11 when we crossed into Canada, we were looked at with those skeptical, piercing eyes of authority, that stared you down into a bundle of nerves – and that was before it got worse, long before scans to strip a human body naked.

Our country changed drastically on 9-11.  At first it was really for the better.  We went to Florida shortly after 9-11 and found a store that still had a supply of American flags in stock – maybe the last store in theU.S.A.with any patriotic items left.  We bought bags full of sweat shirts and cups, huge flags and poles for all our friends and neighbors who couldn’t find them in any store up home.

The feeling in America was good again.  It didn’t matter if you were a Republican or a Democrat, a conservative or liberal, you were an American first, and we were all of the same mind!  “Get the Muslim terrorists who did this and make them pay!”

America was like the America I grew up in!  It was patriotic and loving. America was united and caring.  It was praying again!  It was singing, “God bless America” with pride.

People were brave, wearing shirts with the slogan, “These Colors Don’t Run,” with the red, white and blue American flag waving on their chests behind the brave declaration.

Within days my sister-in-law’s two sons signed up for the Marines.  We were so proud of them.  One son was KIA in Iraq and the other son brought home his brother’s body.  I still remember the phone call.  My brother-in-law called us.  My husband answered.  I was sitting at the very computer I’m sitting at right now in direct line with the telephone.  My husband’s face looked very strange.  It was a look that I had never really seen on his face before.  I couldn’t quite identify it.  Then he just hung up the phone.  He looked at me and said, “Brian is gone.”  I asked, “What are you talking about?”  He repeated the same words, but they didn’t sink in.  How can someone be G O N E?  Then he said the fateful words, Brian was killed in a firefight in Iraq.

I immediately thought of my sister-in-law.  The weight of the Twin Towers had just fallen upon her.  Brian’s son was not even a year old yet and now he was fatherless.

At Brian’s funeral some kind, very patriotic person, made a little Marine uniform for the son of the fallen hero to wear.

The line to get inside the funeral parlor was several blocks long.  Water bottles had to be passed out to keep people hydrated and safe from passing out.

Then it was time to take Brian to the church where he would be buried in the Name of Jesus.  We couldn’t see much because the church was so full that we had to sit upon chairs that were hastily put up in the side alcove because the townspeople had already filled the huge church and all around the outside people were just standing, waiting to pay their respects.

For miles upon miles, the entire route from the funeral parlor to the church, then to the cemetery, the two to three mile long funeral procession sadly moved slowly and respectfully.  Every street was lined with people two to three deep along the curbs, who held signs saying, “Our Hero, We Love You.”  Firemen, who lost friends  and colleagues on 9-11, put their ladders up to the top notch on their fire trucks, with the American flag flying at half mast in honor of another fallen hero!

In our car, we barely spoke.  What words could we say?  Words escape us at times like these.  What words are there to equal the gravity, the sadness, the loss, the finality, the hurt, the pain, the empathy we felt for Brian’s parents, his wife, his son, his brother, also a Marine.

Brian didn’t belong to just his mother or his family anymore.  He was an American hero and everyone was paying tribute to him.

Oncoming cars saw the funeral, figured out who must be inside the black funeral car and did more than stop, they pulled off the side of the road, got out of their cars, saluted and prayed on their knees in the streets as Brian passed by.

A mail truck stopped and pulled off.  This was one time the mail wasn’t the first thing on this postman’s mind.

Then at last we arrived at Brian’s final resting place.  At the cemetery, the news helicopters were so loud I couldn’t hear the preacher pray hardly, but I knew they were interring Brian in the name of Jesus.  It was a Christian burial and this was hallowed ground.  Brian was buried with many hundreds of other former fallen war heroes from all the other wars theU.S.A.had fought, including World War I, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam and Desert Storm.

The guns saluted Brian, fired by other Marines, totally twenty-one shots.  Taps played mournfully.

The flags were presented to his widow and his mother.  But nothing could bring Brian back to their arms ever again.

The war was real.  Death was real.  Emptiness and heartbreak are forever.

The one consolation we all have who are Christians is that our loved one is waiting for us in heaven.  But recently something changed in America again.  In military cemeteries, now the name of Jesus is banned, the word “God” is not allowed to be whispered, and even the Chapel is no longer allowed to be called a chapel, but must now be referred to as a meeting room.

How in ten years have we forgotten God so miserably?

How could we have turned our backs so wantonly on the God we begged to bless us at every baseball game following 9-11?

How can the people in the Veterans Administration and the Obama Administration forbid families the consolation of interring their beloved fallen hero to enter into the ground in the name of Jesus?

Who is more unjust, those who refuse Americans the freedom to practice Christianity in public places on government ground that we have done for 250 years praying openly in the name of Jesus, making it illegal to even breathe God’s Name quietly, or are they the Muslims who are responsible for the thousands lost on 9-11 and thousands more in the aftermath?

What have the godless terrorists won and who really are they?

Everyone is saying this 9/11/2011, “Never forget.”

But no one is saying what should be said, “Repent, America!”

America has to repent of its national sins of abortion and wide-spread acceptance of every thing God hates and all that He has already declared to be sin!  Otherwise, we leave ourselves opened to the consequences of those national sins – which is the consequence of not gaining God’s favor of blessings and protections.  That is the dangerous place America’s people have placed themselves in.

Listen to God’s Word and heed His Warnings!

[2 Chronicles 7:14] If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. [King James Bible]

 

 

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CNN Breaking News Reports on 9/11/2011 – At a ceremony in New York marking the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, family members of the victims have begun reading the names of those who died.  Silence spread across New York at 8:46 a.m. — the time when American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center a decade ago.  The city observed another moment of silence at 9:03 a.m., when United Airlines Flight 175 struck the South Tower.  More than 200 miles away in Washington, mourners will observe a moment of silence at 9:37 a.m. — the moment American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon and killed 184 people.  And at 10:03 a.m., silence will fall on Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93 thwarted a hijacking plot and crashed the plane into the ground.  The attacks killed 2,977 people.