It was an average Tuesday morning in Iowa. Well, not so average, considering that my dryer died just as it was being called into action by a wet load of laundry. I loaded up my sopping wet clothes, with a grumble under my breath, and headed to the only laundromat that I would ever consider going to: a little locally-owned place on the quaint square in the tiny town of Adel.

I arrived to find that I was completely alone in that shockingly clean and well-kept place, and after loading my clothes into the industrial-sized dryer, I settled in with a good book. Shortly after 8:30, my cell phone rang and Hubs’ number flashed across the screen. I answered with my customary greeting, but his reply was anything but.

“Are you by a TV?”

“I’m at the laundromat. The dryer -“

“We’re being attacked. Get-“

“What? Who’s being attacked?? What are you-“

“Planes. Crashing into the Twin Towers. Get to a TV. NOW.”

There was a small unit bolted to the wall of that laundromat, and after I turned it on, I sat there, riveted to it’s tiny screen with the bad picture, long past the moment when the dryer stopped. For a full two hours, I watched the unfolding aftermath of an attack on our country, feeling the irrevocable shift in history in the very marrow of my bones.

How could this have happened?

Why?

Today I sit in an apartment in Texas, watching another TV screen with the same images replaying before my eyes. I have eight more years of living, and two more moves under my belt. My girls, who were 12 and almost 15 at the time, are now 20 and almost 23. And, even with all that’s happened during these eight years, even with all we’ve learned through war and sacrifice and that irrevocable shift in history, I’m still in shock that it all happened; that it was real and not scenes shot from a particularly realistic “end-days” action flick.

I may never get the answers to the questions of “how” and “why”, but I hope the shock is the same next year, and the next, and in ten years, and twenty.

I hope I never get over it.

I hope none of us do, because forgetting has a tendency to cause history to repeat itself.

May we never forget the loss and sacrifice, being ever vigilant to pray for our country and its leaders, and for those who risk their lives fighting for our protection and that of our freedom.

And, lest our remembering trap us in fear, may we never forget Who holds the world in His hands. The Great I Am, Who WAS, and IS and IS TO COME.

God bless us all, and God Bless America.