We Remember. Let's Roll.

(Originally posted September 11, 2010)

It does seem fitting that perhaps the most tragic day in our nation's modern history shares its digits with the nationally recognized code for emergency distress - distressed was certainly how I felt in the aftermath of that event.

In the summer of 2001, we'd just moved to the Springs with Grace in tow, just a mere 7 months after her birth. We were staying with Craig's mom and I had just gotten an unusually cranky infant back to sleep when, bleary eyed, I decide to give up the effort at sleep and head upstairs for coffee. I entered the living room to find my mother-in-law already up - and sitting in the living room with the tv on...an unusual workday routine for her. I opened my mouth to ask what was up, but then couldn't tear my eyes from the images on the screen. With her face in her hands, Mom turned to me and said bleakly, "I think a plane flew into the World Trade Center."

So we watched. And waited - with increasing scores of Americans worldwide, tuning in instantly as word rapidly spread. On that couch, sitting next to Mom, silence seemingly hanging thick everywhere, we watched the second plane careening into the second tower - and could only gasp in shock and then weep in despair as it hit its mark.

Last year, we began the process of educating our two oldest children about the events of that day. We explain to them this was a day of passing - passing of dreams and of hopes and securities and, yes, certainly of life. We tell them Satan started that day, but God finished it: we illuminate that truth with stories regaling the heroism of police, firefighters, emergency responders, and everyday passersby, giving their lives to save others. We remind them that heroes lived - and died - in two other places, as well. We explain the Pentagon. And I've told them the story of Flight 93, in as much detail as is yearly appropriate. I tell them of the anthem, "Let's Roll" and how it was the favorite of Todd Beamer who, against all odds and in the face of almost-certain death, gathered flight attendants, a wrestler, a businessman, a teacher, a coach, and a ragamuffin band of other agents to stand against their hijackers...and, in giving their lives, they spared every one of those at The White House or Capitol or some other vital mark.


We do not fill our children with hate for the souls at the controls of those four planes or for any of the master planners, for that matter; though, we certainly tell them that the want to hate is understandable and, perhaps, even practical. Yet, we saw how big the souls of mankind can be that day. We saw acts of goodness heretofore only imagined in the face of such agony. We saw good conquer evil, if only in the aftermath. And, in the end, what else can we teach them? For we do not want them to hate as we are hated, but to love in spite of it.

Because the aftermath is sometimes the only chance we've got to answer the call of 911.

And we remember.
And we roll.

Crabs. Yeah, You Know The Kind I Mean

If you left children to interpret all of our adult jabberings, someone would end up having crabs.

For real.

When I was a kid, my mom (sorry, Mom, gotta' out ya' here) used to have this one woman I remember she particularly didn't like. At all. Any time she head that gal's name (come to think of it, I don't even know what it was), she'd commence her death spin of name-calling and curse-uttering, usually ending with a muttered chorus of "She has it all." (You're going to have to imagine the tone of disgust).

I din't know what that woman had. But I will tell you that my somewhere-near-9 year old mind grasped that "it" was something one "had" and that "having" it was bad. I mean, B-A-D. Now, it pays to know here that my brother was four years ahead of me in school. Which, for the purposes of this little narrative, meant he was taking Health class. Which also meant he and his friends were lazing around the house one afternoon discovering the horrors of having "it". The only word I could make out before I was resolutely relocated from the room was "crabs." 

And the association was born.

Is this what my mother meant when she said the poor woman had "it" all?

Shivers.

It was a rough next 4 or 5 years, I tell ya', always fearing the claw-footed creatures would infect me in some way. That museum visit to the crustacean exhibit was particularly rough. But then came my turn for Health class - and an especially growdy slide show that proffered the pictorial debut of (among others) crabs. Don't pretend you don't know the kind I mean. The guest speaker, who was probably either fired or relocated to the lunch room, cautioned us - full screen shot behind her pointing finger - on all the manners and methods by which we might contract "it". 

By the end of the school year, my friends thankfully enlightened my ridiculously stupid innocently naive mind that, no, the mother-nemesis was not suffering from an infestation of crabs. Of either kind. Don't pretend you don't know that other kind I mean. If you want total honesty (as if you haven't gotten a serious dose of THAT in this post), I'm not sure I completely grasped the meaning of "it" until...well...right now.

Yep. And this time, I can't even blame it on my mind - whatever its state. Oh, I've long known what my mom  meant by "it": that singular combination of measurements (wallet, house, husband, kids, and 36-24-36) women obsess about. 

Okay, so maybe gals like my  mom might, in that same death spin, mutter about me having it all. I do have a house. I do have a husband. I have a kid; in fact, I've three of them. (The measurements I discard: they're total poo and have been always). I am blessed with shelter, with provision, with love. Isn't that the "it"?

But I'd refuse their premise. "It" isn't any of those things, for that definition centers on status. On materialism. On the temporal. I suppose I do have it all, if by "it" you mean purpose and place. If you mean love and acceptance. If you mean value and vision. That definition centers on identity. On the best depths. On the eternal.

I have it all because I have Him.

Now, if no piece of that story convinced you and you're guffawing, "Nah. I'm not buying. What's one got to do with another?" Well in return, let me ask you this: Who else but God could get a ridiculously stupid innocently naive sold-out-for-Him mind from child to adult by using crabs - and you know the ones I mean - as a stepping stone?

Yeah. 

Think about that.