7 years

On September 11, 2001, I woke up in my college dorm room and turned on the tv like any other day. It was a Tuesday, and I didn't have class until 11, so I slept in until 8:50. The tv showed a horrible sight. The first plane had just hit the north tower and the news stations were trying to figure out what was going on. I watched as the second plane collided with the south tower only minutes later.

I was 18, a college freshman, and this was the first time I had lived outside my parents' house. It was the beginning of adulthood, and I was learning more about the world than I had known before. That day only cemented my belief that this world is a scary place and we live in a scary time.

In July 2002, I was in NYC on a mission trip with my church. We were able to go visit Ground Zero. It was my 19th birthday, a birthday to remember. It was very eery to walk down the nearby streets and know that those were the streets that people had run down in sheer terror only 9 months earlier. I'm not sure where my pictures are from that day, but I'm going to try to find them later.

This is a very serious day for our country and it feels like a big dark cloud hangs over the whole day. We will never forget.