Will there be a yesterday? My sister and I are in our bedroom, mulling over the various worksheets covering our “children’s table,” when we hear the phone. But the phone never rings! Daddy is always in class or at one of his jobs, and Mom almost never talks on the phone. Who is it?

Mom leaves us to our assignments and answers in the hallway. She greets our grandmother, “Gi”, but calls my name a few seconds later. “Grace,” she orders. “Turn on the TV.” “Coming!” I holler, vigorously slapping all the limbs that have fallen asleep since I’ve been lying on them. I amble into the living room and turn on our TV, not expecting to see much. We don’t have cable and only pick up a local network or two with our wire set of “rabbit ears.”

What I see as the screen fades into focus on the screen strikes me like a cement battering ram. Planes flying into skyscrapers. Bodies and body parts falling through the air. Fires in the planes. Fires in the towers. And then the unimaginable. Is this some sort of movie? Who’s going to make it stop?

I freeze.

Anna wanders into the living room casually, carrying her worksheet and a few colored pencils.

“What’s that?” she asks. “A plane accident?”

No words.

I don’t remember when Mom hangs up the phone, or what she tells us the day of the attacks. I just remember crouching on our well-used Persian rug, glued to the TV, watching the planes destroy the towers and our people over and over again. It’s like a pernicious Infomercial with ratings that stay so high it never stops. I don’t know why Anna and I keep watching or why Mom keeps letting us. Maybe she’s hoping for more news updates. Maybe the news is indeed updating but my eight- year-old brain doesn’t follow.

Once Daddy gets home I start hearing new, unfriendly words like “terrorist,” “terror attack,” and “Al-Qaeda.” I have no idea what any of them mean. “Mom, what’s a terrorist?” I’ll ask the next day at lunch. She won’t answer.

My violin lesson and orchestra rehearsal are canceled the day of the attacks. As an eight-year-old, this seems perhaps the greatest tragedy of them all. My violin teacher and my orchestra friends are very real to me. I feel happy or sad with them because we share our stories together. These plane attacks are different. I know I should feel sorry for the falling bodies on our pixelated screen. If you asked me if I feel sorry for them, I’d give a resounding “Yes!” But I worry I’m lying. I don’t feel anything on the inside about all those people. Of course I wish they could come back to life and return to their families. But my life hasn’t changed. I’m sick of watching the news and I haven’t had a violin lesson in two whole weeks! Can’t we just pretend like all this never happened and go back to normal?

Our church holds a candlelight vigil the Friday after 9/11. Suddenly I’m holding a real candle in my real hand for another real person who is really dead. That’s about as real as my music lessons. As are the yellow ribbons tied proudly around many trees in our formerly less-than patriotic Van Nuys neighborhood. If those didn’t make 9/11 real to a little girl in the San Fernando Valley, our next flight to Savannah certainly did: Mom, worrying some or all of us will get foot warts as we remove our shoes and walk barefoot through the TSA scanner; me, getting frisked by big, scary officers even though I’m only nine years old; all of us, inconsolable upon learning there are no more in-flight meals.

Even at that young age, I could sense the world was changing and there would be no going back. For a couple of years, our country enjoyed a deeper sense of unity. In some states it even became cool to say pseudo-Christian phrases like “God Bless America.” Twenty years later, I also look at the little children in airports think how sad it must be that they’ll never see a loved one waiting for them right at the gate after they land. What must it be like to grow up always associating planes with impractical precautions, scary what-ifs, and potential death? How did “terrorist” become a vocabulary word elementary school kids acquire and use, just like “clown” or “chef”?

If I were remembering today without Christ, I would see it as a day of utter tragedy for our nation and for the innocent future generations of America. But because I know that God is as completely good as he is sovereign, I can still trust his plan for our country and its families:

²⁹ Then his disciples said…^” Now we understand that you know everything, and there’s no need to question you. From this we believe that you came from God.”

³¹ Jesus asked, “Do you finally believe? …³³ I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” ~John 16:29-33