Out of the Shadows of 9/11
In September 2001, my husband and I had been married a year. We had just moved back to New York City after living in another state where Brian had been assigned a short project through IBM, the company he worked for. Life back in the city was exciting—Brian was looking into new job opportunities, and I was looking forward to reconnecting with my friends, whom I greatly missed. We found a rental on the 24th floor of a building the Financial District with a terrace overlooking the World Trade Center, which was just sick blocks away. Everything about life seemed new and exciting, full of possibilities.
On the morning of 9/11, I was awakened by Brian screaming that a bomb had gone off in the World Trade Center. We rushed onto the terrace and watched the scene before us: people running across the highway to the Hudson River, the ambulances, fire trucks, and police speeding down the highway, and the fire that shot out from either side of the building. A few minutes later, a plane came streaking over our right-hand shoulders—just 500 feet above us—and went straight into Tower #2. We were blown back into our building from that impact and came to on the floor of our living room. That began the craziness for us: we evacuated our building, the World Trade Center imploded (covering us in dust and debris), and we spent the morning outrunning the black smoke in Battery Park that threatened to asphyxiate us. We eventually were able to evacuate to New Jersey by boat. We learned later that boats carried 500,000 people away from Lower Manhattan; we had unknowingly participated in the largest boat evacuation in history. We made our way back into the city, staying first with friends, then at the home of a kind stranger. We were depressed and in shock, made even worse by our dog becoming sick after licking the dust that covered him in an attempt to clean himself. We were told the glass in the dust had shredded his esophagus.
Our landlord told us that we wouldn’t be able to return to our apartment for a while, if ever. The towers coming down had registered on the Richter scale as an earthquake, and all the buildings had to be tested to see if they were structurally sound, including ours. I became very worried about the vet expense and other mounting bills while being displaced.
A close Christian friend told me to go to Redeemer Presbyterian Church for monetary help. She told me people from all over the world had donated to Redeemer and I should apply to receive that aid. Although I had attended Redeemer when I was single, Brian and I were still in the process of choosing a church. We weren’t members, and we had even set our sights on another church. She urged me to go anyway.
The director of the division that was managing those funds handled things with dignity and grace and allayed my embarrassment over being there. They quickly produced a check that covered our bills. We subsequently decided to make Redeemer our home church.
A lot has changed for my husband and me since 9/11. It caused us to re-evaluate our relationship with our careers, with each other, and with God. Through that indescribable event, God provided and revealed to us a new hope and a new future. Brian left his financial industry job and accepted a job at Redeemer as the Chief Financial Officer. I run the Missions department there. Many congregants are among our closest friends, and we take our roles in the Redeemer ministry seriously. God has blessed us immeasurably.