Remember…
9/11/01
We will remember. Today, tomorrow… forever.
God bless America.
Deuteronomy 31:6
Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”
I suppose I can be tough. Tough in the sense that I can bear the weight of a military marriage and the weight of mama-hood.
Tough seems like a rugged, almost steely term. Makes me sound like I am a pioneer woman or something.
I actually did refer to myself as a pioneer woman the day I came home from the hospital with my 6th baby and my husband returned to work the following morning to prepare his squadron for the impending deployment 2 weeks later.
Impending sounds a bit like doom. It felt like a bit like doom as my brood of 5 little ones ran around me while I sat very, very still in my chair holding my newborn. I felt like a pioneer woman, sent back into the fields. Tough sounds pretty rugged. Strong might be a better word. The truth is, if I have any strength, it comes straight from Him. It’s not my own.
Tough, perhaps. Strong, maybe. But, brave? Now, that I am… not.
I am not a risk taker. Not really.
You know, the kinds of risks that brave people take, like jumping out of airplanes, flying fighters, hiking to the top of Everest, or scuba diving to murky depths. Or roller coasters. I am actually kind of a wimp in those terms.
If you define brave as someone who vomits endlessly during pregnancy and then decides it might be a good idea to try that again… and again… six times, then I am brave.
But, not really. I am just a tad bit like Nemo’s dad as I recall the wisdom of bugged-eyed Dory…
I promised I’d never let anything happen to him… (Marlin)
Hmm, that’ s funny thing to promise. (Dory)
What? (Marlin)
Well you can’t never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him. Not much fun for little Harpo. (Dory)
You know, when a part of you is driven by fear… or worry.
This is not the best way to live in freedom. Fear is just all wrong. But, it is mighty difficult to escape.
Until you are forced out of your big, comfy chair… or house… or life.
Fighting fear, worry, and uncertainty, I keep asking Him for the answer. Then, a thought…
Be spontaneous.
Spontaneity is more difficult than it seems when you are loading a car full of kids, cups, diapers, and all things pertaining to road trip survival.
I don’t mean the kind of knee-jerk reaction that is foolish or inconsiderate of others.
I mean that whisper of an idea, the fleeting thought that makes a u-turn and tickles your thoughts again.
I mean the dreams that nudge, the hopes that tug, but you brush them aside and think…
nah, maybe later.
Not now.
That couldn’t possibly work. Could it?
Living is something I have wanted to do with my family for quite some time now. Living. Not surviving.
We all go through the survival stage with growing babies, but living has been placed in the closet on the top shelf. Just behind the box of fear and worry.
It’s time to rip off the band aid.
It’s time to open the top of the box and let it all go.
Unwrapping that carefully packaged box, I am finding treasures that had been foolishly stored away.
Treasures slowly unfolding from the dusty wrappings.
Moving from the comfortable, the regular, the staid and worn spot is showing me something…
Leaving the comfort can be lonely, but it can make you brave.
Letting go of the regular can breathe new life where you thought fresh air had been suffocated.
Moving from the worn place can open your ears to the still, small Voice.
This new place. I don’t know where it will take me. I don’t know what it holds for my family. I don’t know what adventures lie before us.
I do know that I hear Him. He whispers in the stillness.
The gentle tug I had grown accustomed to dismissing, to reasoning away, to (forgive me) ignoring has become more of a shove.
A shove to be bold. Brave.
Wonder where it will take us?
Have you felt that shove? Do you want to be brave?
I do.
Now that I have etched it in ink… I guess I’ll have to.
Where do you need a boost of brave?
We can hold each other to it…
Joshua 1:9
Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”
Frazzled.
Frazzled and frantic.
We all have those times, don’t we?
If I could just pull it together… just keep moving.
That’s it, isn’t it? The real goal. Keep walking and just. don’t. faint.
Never mind this false illusion of control and perfection… even when we pretend that is not what we are doing.
It really is, you know. Pretend. False control, false perfection… or something like it. Pretend.
The real goal. Keep walking… with Him… toward Him. And just don’t… faint.
Mama…
He looked at me with those sky blue babies that stole my heart over a decade ago.
You are really good at being a mom.
This red-head spinning around.
Are you kidding?
Like a child offered a prize… the best prize of all. It couldn’t be a true statement. Must be a jab… a joke.
Me. Running frantic fixing 6 different meals for 6 different palates. Just trying to get out the door. On. Time.
No, I’m serious mom.
I was listening to the precious ramblings of my 6-year-old, his little brother. Little blue-eyed boy was telling me something so very important. I was responding in the uh-huh-uh-huh-yea-wow-really-oh-boy-that’s-great mode. My oldest boy. He noticed. I scrambled and scratched food together… trying to scramble and scratch and keep it all together.
You do everything without complaining.
You are doing all this and listening to him.
And you do it without complaining.
My eyes brimming, as he continued,
Unlike us.
He smiled and laughed easily at his own joke. They don’t help without a good deal of cattle prodding. Most of them, anyway. We all need a good bit of cattle prodding along the way, don’t we?
That’s probably the nicest thing that anyone has ever said to me.
I squeezed this boy grown to my chin. Where do these years go? The hours, they sometimes skid and swerve… but, the years. They race and speed… until all we see is smoke and dust. Gone.
It’s not true, you know. I don’t do everything without complaining. In fact, I have made many of my nearest and dearest friends through rants of complaints and crankiness.
I complain. Sometimes to myself, sometimes to my friends, my husband, my children… and to God. I am working on it. This work in seeing all things in the light of grace and gratitude. It takes practice.
For a moment, my boy noticed something in my attempts. He noticed and he told me just what I needed to push on in this quest. That positive reinforcement thing. Amazing. No amount of guilt and self-defeat, no amount of you-should-stop-complaining could bring what he brought me with those words.
You do everything without complaining.
No, I don’t. But nothing will make me try harder than those very words. Pretend. Pretend that I am that very person. The non-complainer.
Playing pretend.
We start that as kids. We pretend to be like our moms or our dads. We pretend to be famous or funny. We pretend to be skilled or savvy.
We pretend to be princesses or princes. Kings or Queens. We pretend we are doctors or dare-devils. We pretend to save the weak… we pretend to save the world.
We pretend.
Maybe that’s where it all really starts. Sometimes this pretending really takes us somewhere. It can take us to dreaded pits. I can take us to dazzling pinnacles.
There is something about pretending that begins to sink into our bones. It sinks and slides and settles into our very souls.
Maybe, it’s really about what we pretend. What… who… do we really want to be?
Complainers… or gratitude givers?
Wound-wielders… or soul-soothers?
Misery mongers… or joy seekers?
Sometimes it takes a little, and maybe a little more… pretending. We could just call it practice.
We don’t have to pretend to be princesses or princes. We have already reached royal status. We are already children of the King.
We don’t have to pretend to be doctors or healers. Just one kind word can soothe a gaping wound.
We don’t have to pretend to be dare-devils. We have every reason to be brave. Bold. We have the power of truth and love… and legions of angel armies on our side.
We don’t have to pretend to save the weak. We can simply reach out and touch them.
We don’t have to pretend to save the world. That has already been done.
Just one thing.
The only pretend that matters. The one act of dress-up that changes everything… and needs more practice than we have time.
Pretend to be like Him. We are not. We will not. We won’t even come close. But, that’s the one that matters.
The more we pretend to be like Him, the more He sinks into our souls. The closer we get to anything that really matters.
I have been talking as if it were we who did everything. In reality, of course, it is God who does everything. We, at most, allow it to be done to us. In a sense you might even say it is God who does the pretending. The Three-Personal God, so to speak, sees before Him in fact a self-centred, greedy, grumbling, rebellious human animal. But He says ‘Let us pretend that this is not a mere creature, but our Son. It is like Christ in so far as it is a Man, for He became Man. Let us pretend that it is also like Him in Spirit. Let us treat it as if it were what in fact it is not. Let us pretend in order to make the pretence into a reality.’ God looks at you as if you were a little Christ: Christ stands beside you to turn you into one. I daresay this idea of a divine make-believe sounds rather strange at first. But, is it so strange really? Is not that how the higher thing always raises the lower? A mother teaches her baby to talk by talking to it as if it understood long before it really does.
CS Lewis
I do complain. I try not to complain. But, I do.
For a moment, my son caught me. A moment. A moment in which the game of dress-up, this life-long challenge of pretend… actually took hold.
The pretend became a reality and an eleven-year-old boy took notice.
And lifted his own young armor for this life journey. Bold, brave… joy seeking.
1 John 3:2
Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
The water heater broke that day.
I remember the water running across the garage floor, flooding plastic toys that were waiting for the little one growing in my swollen belly.
The water flowed endlessly, but I couldn’t seem to pay much attention to it. The day was a sweltering, early one in Las Vegas that morning.
It wasn’t the leaking water that woke us. It was the 7 am phone call.
Did you see it?
Have you heard?
Both towers! The planes flew right into them!
There’s another one – the Pentagon.
And a 4th… they are looking for it….
I startled from a deep, pregnant sleep. Shocked.
Repeated the words to my husband.
Bin Laden
That’s all he said. He knew.
The rest of the day… burst water heater, blazing Las Vegas sun… all a blur. I remember rubbing the swollen life inside me while I watched the news…. stories over and over… smoke, terror, fear.
The eeriness of the empty skies in the city that day. The only day, in a city full of life and air traffic… everything sat silent.
What kind of place are we bringing you into?
I wrapped arms around myself in a thin attempt to protect this new life given to us.
We had 5 more little ones over the years. With each story passing along news tickers and told by animated reporters, I wondered the same.
What kind of place have we brought you into?
Monday. Scrolling through pages in the screen I glimpsed a message from a friend.
Two bombs have exploded at the Boston Marathon.
My mind raced to my dear girlfriend.
That’s where she is!
He’s running that race.
My friend, having just lost both parents to the vicious villain of cancer. Only three months apart. Sometimes it all seems too much.
She was there… cheering on her boyfriend.
What’s her number?
I lost her number…
My contact list, incomplete after being swallowed into the cyber world. Incomplete. My list was just incomplete without this sister I’ve had for 25 years.
Scrambling with sudden dread, I grabbed the remote and scenes of chaos flashed before us on the screen. Smoke, terror, fear. My warrior grew silent. The all too familiar scene required no words.
This time, the moment of panic to find out more as I worried for my friend, brought the scenes to life in front of my children. Eyes wide, they watched. The scenes, the stories gruesome. The voice of the reporter cracked in the familiar tone that took me back to September 11.
I turned it off. Sometimes it all seems too much.
A message flashed.
I’ve talked to her. They are ok. Here is her number.
A wave of relief fell across me… followed by a wave of dread. How many killed? Hurt? How much more?
The eyes from young faces peered at me questioningly. These little ones…. they feed from our love, they feed from our tempers, they feed from our joy, they feed from our fear. I do not want to feed my children fear.
Let’s pray.
I whispered as a I took small, young hands in mine. They nodded in silence and bowed their tender, trusting heads. We prayed for love. We prayed for healing. We prayed for peace and protection. We prayed over and over for the Father’s arms to wrap around the people of a city attacked by the evil serpent of terror. We prayed.
Sometimes prayer rattles like a check list, as if we have forgotten we are talking to the very One who loves us the most. It shouldn’t, but sometimes it does. This time we felt it. The Holy Arms wrapping around and a blanket of peace fell across the room. The glimmer of worry vanished from the young eyes and they went back to the carrying on of kids.
I texted with my girlfriend that day. Over and over the words strung together and revealed a disbelief of the reality before her eyes.
Her runner. He had, at the last moment, moved forward in the wave of runners. This put him ahead of schedule by 20 minutes.
Her runner. He finished the race. They moved from the victory line in celebration… 20 minutes before the bombs exploded.
Sometimes it all just seems too much.
She wrote of chaos and fear. Sheer horror and crying. Running and little kids scared to death because they didn’t understand as they saw horror on the faces of adults. She saw a mother and her children crying because their dad was running the race and they couldn’t find him.
Broke me right there.
She wrote.
Drawn into the place through her rapidly strung words.
Oh God, that breaks me right here.
I looked at the faces of my children.
We do that, don’t we? We put ourselves into these places of fear and dread… we imagine.
What if.
Bedtime came.
Weary children, warm beds.
My oldest daughter tucked tight under soft blankets.
Mom, will you pray with me?
I really want to pray.
And she prayed. The most beautiful words flowed from this child as she prayed for family, friends, new babies, fighters of cancer, and a city fear-filled and mourning. She prayed words that drifted like incense to the very feet of our Father.
A smiled crossed her sleepy face.
Goodnight mama. I love you.
Sweet slumbers took my precious girl.
Faith. She prayed the worries and wonders and why’s straight to the Source. She released it all and fell to dreams.
May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice. (Psalm 141:2)
Prayers. Our prayers. The prayers of the saints are incense for our God. You know what He will do with the prayers of the faithful? He will build bombs. Bombs to right the world. To wipe every tear, to heal every wound. Fear will have no place to hold foot.
…Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. (Revelation 5:8)
…He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all the saints, on the golden altar before the throne. The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints, went up before God from the angel’s hand. Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth; and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake. (Revelation 8:3-5)
Faith.
In this battlefield of earth, where we wonder why…
We fight the good fight.
The good fight… we fight together…
To let go of fear, embrace the faith of a child, and fight the good fight… finish the race.
We provide the shrapnel of love that the justice serving God will use…
to turn the earth off its head… and back to holy ground.
Hebrew 12:1
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.
Who knew it would hurt so much?
I mean it’s been almost a year and I feel like a thick scab has been ripped from an unsuspecting wound.
Who knew grief would haunt you when you least expect it?
I didn’t know. I thought I was good to go.
I don’t think so much about her suffering. I think more about the days before the word cancer ever entered our conversations. I think about who she was. Not this victim who needed treatments, radiation, chemotherapy, meals for her family, get well cards, and wigs. I think about her radiance before a vicious disease tried to claim her.
She gave a speech once. She knew what her prognosis was at this time. She said that she was a survivor. She was surviving the attack of the vicious enemy. She would survive the attack… even when it took her last breath.
I remember the priest at her funeral telling us that she wanted answers for the suffering.
Don’t we all want answers for the suffering?
Don’t we all want to throttle the suffering until it can no longer take one more victim?
The priest spoke words I will never forget. He told her that Jesus’ story is about the suffering. His very purpose was to come here, to claim us, through His suffering. The culmination of His earthly story, the story that rattles us and tears the human skin from our souls, is His story of suffering.
She walked this suffering, bearing her cross. She was gracious, and beautiful, and loving, and kind. Her humor split my sides. She did not understand her suffering, but she bore it.
Face to face with death, how does a soul bear it?
I thought I had made it through. The memory of birthdays, Christmas cards, texts, phone calls. It’s been almost a year. I expected the anniversary of her home-going to hit. The same day as my little one’s birthday. My plan… focus on the birth. The birth of my baby. My friend’s birth into perfection.
I didn’t think the wound would ooze tonight.
But, here it is. Bleeding. All over a screen.
Life is good. Life goes on. She would want that. Then, this shot of pain… right through the heart.
Checking old text messages. Listening to old voicemail. Just her voice… one more time.
Grace like rain. The wound torn open to wash clean again with grace. Just when I think I’m good to go. He reminds me of grace.
We are not good to go here. We are far from good. We are covered in grace. Just like rain.
She would tell me this.
It will always be ok.
All because of His grace.
This grace raining over me. Me raining all over this keyboard. His grace all over… all of it.
This reign of grace.
There will be no more suffering… no more victims… all because of grace.
Romans 5:21
so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Hi! My name is Karin Madden. Writer. Warrior wife. Mom of six pack. Homeschooler. German-blooded southerner. Welcome to the place where I explore what it means to grow stronger - spirit, soul, and body. I write to inspire and encourage - to remind you we are not alone. By being bold with grace and speaking truth in love, we can become who we are meant to be. I'm glad you are here.