can you believe it’s been eight years? there is so much life to be lived in eight years. how many breaths or bites have you taken since then? can you count the number of things you’ve learned or steps you’ve placed beneath you? the juxtaposition of life: babies being born while those towers burned and turned to ash.

it’s not always easy to be grateful for each passing day or hour or moment. but to be given another year of life? another eight? i am effortlessly thankful for that. it’s a number i can count on my fingers. a span of time where i was given the freedom to explore, recover from setbacks, decide and accomplish. a span of time where i metamorphosed into an adult, a wife, and maybe even a woman.

i am no longer that same girl as on september 11 2001, in my world history class, stunned and confused by blurring images on tv, my ancient teacher standing there in his skeleton consisting of more metal replacements than bone, an ex-soldier in world war two, speechless. he knew. and there i was, innocently out of touch with what this would mean for our country and its ripple effect on the entire world. so incapable of identifying with the families of those who were lost. it was all unfathomable. although, i could still say the same today.

there was anger and grieving and pain, and rightfully so. but life can be taken at any time. it is a gift to begin with.

“does it not make a great difference whether i am, so to speak, the landlord of my own mind and body, or only a tenant, responsible to the real Landlord? if somebody else made me, for His own purposes, then i shall have a lot of duties which i should not have if i simply belonged to myself.” – cs lewis

recognizing september 11 every year allows us to remember our responsibility, as tenants of our body for a period of time, to complete to our fullest ability our spiritual duties while we are here, and to love and appreciate with a fervor this life that carries along with it freedom and happiness and other beautiful things. whenever i go, i want to go with a sense of fulfillment for where i’ve been and nothing less than awe for where i’m headed.