Remembering

I have struggled this week in making time for Confession Friday, so forgive me that I may wait till next week to confess.  It seems to be a week of remembrance, first with James' birthday and, of course, today remembering 9-11 and those whose lives were so tragically lost.  So I think that tonight, as September 11th and the ninth anniversary of that horrible day winds down, I will share with all of you my thoughts.

Today has been a normal, perfectly wonderful day for me and Ed.  We went out as we do most Saturdays, stopped by Starbucks, then we hit the yard sales.  Later in the day I went to Goodwill and to the grocery store.  I talked to one of my daughters, my sister and my friends, all pretty mundane stuff.  Yet, as we traveled around Peachtree City and Newnan, GA, it struck me how very fortunate and blessed we were to have this normality, this routine day, just as we had the day before and the day before that, and so on.  I thought of those families whose lives were forever changed on September 11th, 2001, and how they would wish in their wounded hearts to spend one more normal day with their loved ones who were doomed to perish that day.  I thought of children who lost parents, and moms and dads that lost sons and daughters, friends that lost friends, husbands and wives that lost their life partners.  I thought of those who are left behind that have lost hope and faith in God and the human race or those that have found it.  I think of a nation that has been forever changed and how we are left with the questions of why and the uneasy feeling of when the next attack will take place.  Because it will, whether tomorrow or next week or next year or next decade. 

So here is what I am left with tonight with 30 minutes of this day remaining:  I am grateful.  I am grateful that I live in a country that has men and women of such courage that each and every day they get up, don the uniform of a policeman or firefighter and rush into burning buildings or chase bad guys and that they are willing to put their lives on the line for me and you, just as those NYC policemen and firefighters did that day for people they never knew.  I am grateful for a country that has such stellar young men and women who volunteer to serve in our Armed Forces, to protect us against an enemy I pray we will never see on these shores, who protect our freedom in far away places that many of us can't even locate on a map.  I am grateful that in this country we can live and travel where and when we want without the fear of war and oppression.  I am grateful that this country is still, as President Ronald Reagan described it in his first inaugural address, "this last and greatest bastion of freedom".   I am grateful that the American dream still lives, despite the economic hard times we have seen this past few years.  I am grateful that I live in a nation that will not forget those who died on Sept. 11th, 2001. And  I am most grateful for normal, ordinary days like today, Sept.11, 2010.