Jerseygirl, JESUS
On September 11, 2001, I was walking down the hallway at work when Anna, our HR Director hurried down the corridor with a worried look on her face. “There’s a fire in the World Trade Center,” she said. I knew immediately why she looked so worried — we had a small office there, with a few personnel.
I didn’t think much of it. I had a brand new assistant I was training — it was just her second day. We had the radio playing in the background, as usual. We were concentrating on work, but slowly the background noise of the broadcast started distracting us. There seemed to be chaos in the radio studio, something about a second plane, about us being under attack. We tried to keep working, not realizing what was happening. A while later, I will never forget the sound of the broadcaster’s voice as he exclaimed, “Oh my God, the tower came down. The tower came down. Oh my God.”
As soon as the office closed, I went home to find my mother glued to the television. We watched the replay of events. I tried to call my friends in the city, but you couldn’t get through to anyone.
Then the jets came.
They flew low, rattling the house, shaking the windows, and seemed to come at regular intervals. They were both a comfort and unnerving. This is what it felt like to be at war.
Nervous and rattled, my mom and I decided to get in the car and drive. We drove all over — to Teeterboro Airport, where the jets were coming and going, low, loud, fierce. To Fort Lee, where across the George Washington Bridge flowed a river of people in ties and button down, sweat-stained shirts; high heels carried in hands; torn stockings; grey dust. Not knowing what else to do, we tried for normalcy, and stopped for frozen yogurt. The man at the counter had to come in to serve from outside, where he sat on the curb in front of the store, chain smoking.
Eventually, we saw the smoke. Thick, black, rising up from that big, black hole.
That night, I sat on the edge of my bed and sobbed.
Soon, we started hearing the rumors that Muslims were dancing in the streets in nearby Patterson. Instantly, I remembered a day when a man from the Middle East had, years earlier, preached at my church and exclaimed with passion, Islam is the antichrist! Islam is the devil!
He said it with such passion, that surely it must be true.
I noticed the fear creeping up the back of my neck. This was a dark time in my faith life, and it was replaced by a rabid Americanism in those years after 9/11.
If Drumpf had run for office back then, I very well might have voted for him.
But then, Jesus.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In