"Where were you when...?" is the question on everyone's lips right now. It's one of those surreal moments in life where I can hear the echoes of my own voice in the questions of my children.
I remember asking my mom where she was when JFK was assassinated. I remember asking my dad what he was doing when, as a 9 year old in Podunkville eastern Oregon, he heard the news about Pearl Harbor over the radio.
I never expected to hear my children ask me the same question.
Moments in history are moments of life. A nursing baby, two toddlers in diapers, laundry to do, a kitchen to clean... just plain, ordinary moments until four planes and nearly 3,000 deaths changed history forever. All of a sudden those completely unmemorable moments are burned into your mind and become the stuff of history - the answer to "where were you?"
Life has to go on though, you know? The baby still needs nursing, the diapers still need changing, the laundry still needs doing and the house still needs cleaning. Life still has ordinary moments in the midst of great tragedy, but somehow, for a while at least, they don't seem so ordinary.
You kiss your baby's head a little longer, because his future isn't as certain as it was a few hours ago. You walk out to the trash with the full diaper pail and look at the sky, just wondering what comes next. For the first time, it crosses your mind that the meal you're about to make could be the last. Even though 99.9% of life is exactly the same, everything feels different.
Until it doesn't.
Security slowly creeps its way back in. The "new normal" is just normal. And you know what? That's ok. The best way to honor those who lost their lives is to live our own.
"Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8)
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