TWENTY YEARS AGO

I was working as a youth pastor at First United Methodist Church of Pensacola, Florida. That much I recall for sure. 

The rest of my recollections I don't entirely trust, but here is what I THINK I remember: I didn't have anywhere I had to be that morning and Melissa must have had a rough night with our first child because I was letting her sleep in. Caleb was four months old and I had just strapped him into his swing and turned on the TV, completely unaware that every channel was broadcasting images of one of the World Trade Center's towers billowing smoke. 

Of course, I was immediately transfixed. And horrified. It must have been a little before 9:00. There was still the assumption that it was a terrible accident. 

I believe I immediately ran in to the bedroom to tell Melissa about it. I think she was sitting beside me watching the TV minutes later when the live cameras caught the second plane crashing into the other tower. 

And baby Caleb gently swung forward and back.

Reflecting on it now, I was not at all in youth pastor mode that morning or even the days that followed. I wasn't thinking about the teens of our church and how the events of 9/11 might traumatize them. To be honest, I was filled with dread and an ache in my heart - for me, for Melissa, and especially for little Caleb. I was certain he would be growing up in a world gripped tight by fear and, likely, a world at war. Things were going to be terribly different.

I don't know what to make of it twenty years later. In a way, some aspects of all of our lives did change in fundamental ways. And there have been wars, yes, but they have not touched my family directly. If you had told me that day that in the next twenty years there would not be another terrorist attack on American soil even close to the severity of 9/11, much less none with higher death counts and greater destruction than 9/11, I would have called you an extreme Pollyanna. I fully expected more planes to drop out of the sky within days or weeks. 

But here we are.