Where were you?

Nine years ago today, I was standing in Baptist hospital, picking up a breast pump from the lactation consultant. I was holding my tiny 3 week old baby with all the confidence of any first time mama. As I was waiting there, a nurse asked me if I had heard that the Pentagon had been attacked.

I was stunned. I really and truly believed that it couldn't be possible. I loaded my new baby girl back into my car and drove home, scanning the radio stations for details of the horrible news I had just heard. I heard more. The twin towers. Both had been hit. Collapsed. Thousands feared dead.

I got home and immediately turned on the news. Matt Lauer and Katie Couric were describing the tragedy as it unfolded. I sat in disbelief, holding my new baby, wondering what was happening to the world into which she had just been born.

Ken walked in the door, sent home from work and still wearing his flight suit. The FAA had grounded all flights that day. We sat together and watched, wondering and fearful and saddened by all that was happening.

There were so much lost in those few hours. The lives that were taken, the innocence of an entire generation. My children will never walk someone to the gate at an airport, go to a stadium without metal detectors, enter a federal building without barricades. I will never again go to an airport without remembering or see a Special Report on TV without wondering if the next "big one" will be now.

For my parents generation, it was the assassination of JFK and man on the moon. They can tell who exactly where they were and what they were doing when those events changed the face of our country. For us, it will always be 9/11. No matter what other events color the landscape of our nation in the future, where we were on that day will always be burned in our mind.

I will not forget the lives of those lost on that day or the lives lost since for those fighting to protect our nation. I will not forget the terror of that day or the sense of patriotism in the days following. I will not forget that even in the midst of evil, our God is still in control. And still good. And I will not forget where I was or what I was doing when the innocence of a country was lost.

Where were you?