Titus 2 Men And Women

When National Tragedy Strikes At The Tender Age of Six
by Denise Lower

I was six years old when the then most dramatic, life altering event happened, that changed the way Americans felt about their country.

I was in first grade in 1963, and we lived close enough to the grade school I attended to walk home every day for lunch.  The moment I came through the back door, I knew something was different.  My mother was not standing in the kitchen.  I walked through the kitchen, the dining room and into the living room.  I just stared at my mother who was seated on a large green vinyl hassock directly in front of the television.

She really didn't even notice me standing there.  My mother, who took great pains to protect me from undesirable things, was sobbing as she stared, seemingly transfixed by what she saw on the television screen.

I remember thinking, "My grandparents must have died……maybe my Daddy died."  I finally asked, "Mommy, what's the matter?"  I will never forget the next few minutes.  It was in that frozen slice of time, I learned about good vs. bad.  I realized not everyone thought or acted the same way I did, nor responded to what I preceived as good in the same way.

My mother finally turned and looked at me.  I saw such sadness in her eyes, but I remember seeing something else.  FEAR.  She tried to compose herself and then in a watery voice that seemed to come from her tears, she said, "Honey, someone has shot the President."

"Mr. Kennedy?", I replied.

"Yes"

"Why would someone do that?", I asked.

And then came the reply that would help me form my value system for the rest of my life.

"Well honey, there are some bad people in the world.  People who don't like it when others do things they wished they had done...bad people who only want to make other people feel as bad as they do."

"Well, why did they shoot the President?", I inquired.

"I don't know", was her very honest reply…….then the tone on the television changed and her attention was immediately drawn away from me and to the screen.

"Mommy, is the President okay?", I innocently asked, as only a trusting child, unacquainted with death and destruction, can do.

My mother could only stare at me.  In retrospect, I now know she was struggling with whether to let me really know such evil, sinister things could occur in this land of the free.  I could almost see her weigh in the balance the effect my hearing the truth from her lips, or from someone at school later on.  Family values won, but still my mother could not speak.

I began to think the unutterable.  I used a word that I had never before in my young, sheltered, very American life had uttered.

"Mommy, is the President dead?", I said in a very small voice.  Hearing my own voice say that word scared me.

My mother could only nod, then held out her arms as I rushed into them for comfort.  The comfort only a mothers touch, albeit drenched in tears, could hold.  I remember thinking I never wanted to leave the circle of those arms.  The world was such a scarey, evil place.  And we lived in America, the greatest country on earth.

Caleb was six years old on September 11, 2001.  We had just finished our breakfast, when the phone rang.  Daddy was on the other end, calling from his cell phone from somewhere in the east while performing his job as truck driver.

My husband's voice sounded excited, even scared a little.  "Honey, a plane just hit one of the Twin Towers in New York City".

"Oh, it did not, you're lying", was my response, knowing how he liked to joke when he called me that early in the morning, although I thought the subject matter was a little raw, and questioned how much sleep he had gotten the night before, driving his semi through the night, to make it to his early morning delivery in New Jersey, and a pick up just outside of Manhattan after that.

"No, really, honey, turn on the radio.", he anxiously replied.  "They're saying it's some kind of a  terrorist attack."

As he was saying those words, I was stepping to our stereo system, clicking it on to the local" talk-only" radio program I enjoyed checking with throughout the day for weather and traffic.

The radio announcers were speaking in much more agitated tones than what I was familiar with.   They indeed, were speaking of a plane hitting one of the Towers.

I told my husband I was going to hang up and run upstairs to turn the television on.  Caleb of course, did not understand the sense of urgency in the situation.  He reluctantly followed me upstairs, wanting to know if he could watch "his shows" when I had seen what I wanted to, thinking it a treat to be turning on the television at that time of day.  Once the television went on, the events that unfolded in New York, and the conversations that occurred between my husband and myself caused the television to not go off until VERY late that evening and to be on almost non-stop for the next 2 days.

I immediately called my husband back on our cordless phone.  He answered, even more agitated than before. As I began to speak, while the cameras were focused on the Twin Towers, the second plane hit the second tower, and I heard my husband say, "Oh my goodness, another plane just hit the other tower."

I had no idea how he was seeing this, driving down the road in his truck, when he said to me, "I just saw it, I just saw the plane, it ran right into the tower. It was then I realized that my husband was close enough to downtown Manhattan to actually SEE the events that were unfolding on the television in front of me.

I was stunned. He told me he was starting to run into LOTS of traffic, and said he needed to hang up, to concentrate on his driving.  I said ok, reluctantly.  Several minutes later, I stared in utter and absolute shock as the first tower imploded, disappearing into dust and smoke.  I immediately called my husband's cell number, he answered and said he had just seen what I had seen, only from about one mile away, across the Hudson river on the NJ turnpike.

He told me of the many emergency vehicles passing him, rushing to the scene of the worst terrorist attack on American soil ever.

I don't remember much after that, just images of smoke and dust from the television screen.  News reporters who did not even know how,  began to describe the scene unfolding before their eyes.

My husband hung up, knowing that before too long, cell communication would probably become difficult, if not impossible.  Inside, I felt something inside of me sort of melt. I did not know how close he really was, if he was trapped there, or when I would be speaking to him again.  I was truly scared. The same feelings I had as a six year old child, learning for the first time about evil people in the world, came flooding back to me.

It was then I realized my six year old son was seated beside me, asking questions, looking to me for the same type of advice I looked to my mother for 38 years before.

I came out of my reverie long enough to give Caleb the nearly same speech my mother gave me so very long ago.

He asked nearly the same questions I did back then.  He wanted to know what happened.  He wanted to know if there were people in the buildings.  He wanted to know where they went.  He wanted to know who did it. He wanted to know exactly where his Daddy was.   He wanted to know why.

Just like me when I was six. Why? As my mother had turned from me, with no apparent answer to my question, I did the same thing. Shortly thereafter, my closest friend arrived after hearing Scott was so close to the scene of the tragedy. Just before she arrived, the cell communication I feared we would lose, went dead. It was days later I was to discover the Verizon tower Scott's cell phone accessed while driving down that turnpike, had been on top of Tower One.

Hours later, and still in a state of shock, but reassured because Scott had finally gotten through that afternoon, once he had driven far enough away from the scene of the disaster, my older 22 year old son returned home from work. He lives within the generation of people who have never lived through a "war". He does not remember intimately the details of Viet Nam. He was only 11 years old when he watched the events of the Gulf War dash across the tv screen, which I am sure he observed as he would a movie, not really touching his life.

This man child of mine barged in the door, fairly shouting, "I'm gonna join the army and then I'm gonna go over there and KILL those people. How DARE they come here and threaten our security?"

WOW, this from a child of mine who has always been unbelievably passive. Then I realized, he had never known war, or threats to his way of life. He was reacting with the emotion of someone who really didn't know how to react to fear and violence. And my little son had never seen it either.

How could I, as a mother still in shock, with her husband still out there somewhere, calm both of their fears, and mine?

I went to the Bible. Together, later that night, we talked of the wars in the Old Testament. I explained to them that God held this world in His hand and that nothing here happens without His permission and knowledge. That God put leaders in place. That our President had been put in office in such an unusual way, "for such a time as this". That God knows the beginning from the end. That "the Lord hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil", Proverbs 16:4. That verse had always stumped me, until that moment.

Caleb and I prayed later that night for his Daddy, for the President and for the families of all those victims. He seemed strangely comforted.

As I was laying in bed, actually in fear of what someone else might do to this country in the middle of the night, I reflected on just why Caleb was comforted. God spoke in an ever so quiet voice, words of peace and comfort to me.

God's Word, the Holy Bible that I have grown to love, has all the comfort and security I need in times of distress and fear. I repeated different verses in my mind that I had memorized concerning security, peace, comfort. They all came back to me. God will always be with me. He will never leave me. He is a strong tower, which I can run into at any time. Verses too numerous to mention here.

And finally 38 years after the fact, I came up with the answer to "why?" Because God allowed it. We don't have to know the reasons why he allowed it, we simply have to accept that He did.

This Biblical truth has helped me so much in the time following this most recent tragedy. The tragic results of this act of terrorism have taken a heavy toll on this nation. I could become bitter and angry and disillusioned with our leadership. But when I consider all that has happened in the light of the fact that the Sovereign God of the Universe allows these things to happen in His timing, I cannot be angry. I accept His omniscience bask in His everlasting love and presence and go on with my life, praising and serving the God I love.

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