September 10th

On Monday, September 10, 2001, a family had dinner together for the last time. A dad put his children to bed and kissed them goodnight for the last time. After a long day of meetings, a tired business woman looked forward to the morning flight that would take her home...but that flight wouldn’t reach its destination. A little boy went to bed in PJs with fire trucks all over them. They were his favorite, because his daddy told him stories about how he gets to go to work and ride those trucks everyday. His dad was his hero, and the next morning his dad would be the very real hero to countless others, but he wouldn’t be home for dinner that night or any night after that.

Another woman lay awake in her bed worrying about her 8am job interview the next morning. She finally fell asleep with only the possibility of a couple of hours of rest. Her exhausted body slept longer than she intended, and she was frantic about how late she would be for such an important meeting. It saved her life.

Life is so fleeting. So precious. Imagine if any one of those people and the almost 3000 others had known that they only had a few hours left on this earth. What would they have done differently? What would you have done if that was you? Because it could’ve been you. It could’ve been any of us.

We are every person who went to bed on September 10, 2001, thinking we have an infinite number of days in front of us. We have things that are undone, burned bridges that haven’t been rebuilt but can and should be. We’re going to bed without saying ‘I love you’ or ‘I’m sorry’ to someone who desperately needs to hear it. We are worrying about things that we can’t control. We’re putting off that crazy dream, because the fear of failing at it is overwhelming. We’ll get to it someday...or will we?

The one thing that differentiates us from all of those people who were just doing life on Monday, September 10, 2001, is that we are here doing life on Monday, September 10, 2018.

In their memory, let’s spend September 11, 2018, honoring them by saying, ‘I love you’ and ‘I’m sorry’. Let’s hug and laugh and cry and take a longer lunch and eat ice cream, because we can. Let’s be filled with gratitude for the countless blessings in our lives. Let’s do the thing that scares us, because NOW is the time.

I, for one, am going to make sure that you, my friends, know how loved you are by me. I love doing life with you even if it’s mostly through social media. You have impacted my life in small and huge ways. I pray that you go to bed tonight with full hearts. I hope you wake up tomorrow - Tuesday, September 11, 2018 - with a renewed spirit to say all the words and do the all things, because it could’ve been you in 2001...but it wasn’t.