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I thought a lot about where I was six years ago today.  There are very few days in my life and I think most people’s that we can so clearly remember where we were as years go on.  9/11 is one of those days I think most remember.  My memories are vivid of that morning.  It was a rough time anyway.  My mom was near death with cancer.  We’d spent months battling with her and she was quickly failing. It was a time I had begun to ask God to take her.  That morning, I was sitting at my desk.  I happened to look up to see Elizabeth standing in our boss’s office. Elizabeth and I had spent endless hours through the years talking about end-time prophecy.  With the threat of Y-2K, I even called her New Year’s Eve, 1999-2000.  “We are safe!” I said with relief. We had electric, the computer still worked! The world didn’t fall apart!  All that stored food and water would have to be used. We laughed.  That morning, as I sat at my desk, as I looked up, I noticed she was looking at TV in our boss’s office.  She looked at me pale, shaking her head.  “What?”  I whispered.  She just shook her head and pointed.  I got up and walked in.  Just in time for the 2^nd plane to hit the 2^nd building.  “What are you watching?” Was it a movie? It felt surreal, ya know?  “A plane crashed into the World Trade Center, now a 2^nd one!” She said in a shocked tone.  “OMG! What is happening?” I said in a trance-like state. Could words really be spoken?  We just sat there and watched. I stumbled back to my desk, a million questions going through my mind.  Then someone yelled, “They got the pentagon!”  What?!!!  It felt as if we were being invaded.  Then the reports started, they are after the White House, another plane is headed back for the capital building.  No one could make heads or tails out of the chaos.  Parents began to call, “I’m coming to get my child NOW!  America is under attack!”  The Muslim families quietly came to get their kids too, fearing retribution.  The world was surely ending! Yet, we were told to remain normal and do our jobs.  The only time I was so angry that I couldn’t touch the emotion I was feeling! But I carried on. I maintained, Elizabeth there to share in the emotions with me.  It was how I made it.  No matter where you were that day, I assume we all felt complete shock and despair and uncertainty on where it was all going to go.  Was it the end of the world? It sure felt like it to me! My mom was dying, my kids were gone, having moved out and two getting ready to get married, and now, my country under attack.

I went to the hospital that afternoon.  My dad made me promise I wouldn’t tell my mom.  Not that she would have understood anyway, I mean she was on so much morphine most of the time she was unconscious. I sat in the hospital that night unable to watch the news.  The most I could do was sneak out of her room to go smoke a cigarette and try to get an update from any other smoker sentenced to go outside too.  If I was alone I’d pray.  Sometimes I’d feel him, I had met soul mate months earlier.  These were new feelings for me too.  I don’t even remember if I cried that day?  I just wondered where I’d get the strength to make it through what lay ahead.  As the week went on, miracles came out, but so did tragedy.  On TV, what little I could watch, and in my life as my mom was going so quickly.  She died the day the stock market opened up again, exactly one week later.  The morning of the day she died, I had gone in to find her wide awake sitting up!  She smiled! The first time she had recognized me in a very long time!  My MOM was back! Maybe I got my miracle too?! I thought! Maybe she’ll pull through!  I had to turn on the TV, I HAD too!  My dad wasn’t around!  “Mom, the stock market is opening today!” I said full of excitement!  I realized she didn’t know what I was talking about, so I told her a bit of what had happened. I remember her face, she understood and knew life had changed in a major way! We sat and watched the opening of the bell.  An hour later she was gone again. All her veins now collapsing and the horrific things happening as the medicine could no longer be given to her intravenously.  Suddenly the stock market didn’t matter. 

She died early the next morning. I was in the room with her all that night with praise/worship music on, reading the Bible to her and words of love and light, and praying and talking to God with her.  My dad left to go home and rest for awhile, he couldn’t take it.  The presence of God and angels was SO clear in that room that night I lost all fear of death.  God showed me heaven in a vision, I don’t know if I got to see it because it was so near, or if God was giving me my own peace…..but that night, I lost all fear of death once and for all.  When the time came to stop, and there came a time to stop, I sat down in the chair, tired.  It was almost 4:00 in the morning.  I decided to come home and try to sleep a few hours.  My dad had come back and would stay with her.  She died while I was on my way home, my dad beside her. Life truly had ended as I had known it.

When 9/11 rolls around I remember a time in my life I faced such dark days!  But God was so faithful to me.  In all honesty I will always believe, and have even told soul mate this, God brought soul mate into my life 7 months before this time came.  The connection was so real, I found strength in knowing he was somewhere out there on this earth and we had found one another.  I would literally feel him when it all got so tough.  Not to be confused with God’s love and strength because that is the where all of my source flows from, but in some way, I can’t explain, soul mate got me through too.

I actually told him this a few months later when we crossed paths again the following June.  He held me that night for a moment and whispered in my ear how sorry he was about my momma. Memories of the times I felt him around me those long nights before she passed flowed through me as he whispered the words.  He had to know, I had to tell him! Even if he was a perfect stranger, I had to tell him thank you!  As we got ready to leave that night I got up the nerve,  I’m sure my voice was quivering,  “You know, we met when my mom was so sick,  and it gave me this incredible strength to get me through……..” as I spoke the words he stopped me and looked at me,  “Isn’t it funny how that works.”  My heart melted.  Did he just say what I thought he said?  He is admitting he is feeling it too? Somehow he knew what I went through and he was there with me!  Those words have stayed with me all this time later.  “Isn’t it funny how that works?” Somewhere out there, he feels what I do, but he can’t explain it nor can I.  He just knows it is, as do I. All those feelings of those dark days I was able to share with him, months later. It was a miracle to me.

My day today was crazy and very chaotic!  I felt apprehensive about today anyway, still having this crazy feeling that something is getting ready to happen!  Those feelings were replaced by incredible emergencies happening in school!  Whether it was a kid that went crazy, literally, or covering classes for a teacher where I found myself running through the building looking for someone to cover the classes, then searching for the grandma of the student who was laying in handcuffs going crazy, and so many minor things in between, there wasn’t much time to reflect during the day!  “Sunshine, go here, Sunshine, go there!”  Mr. Boss was so covered up he had me going a million different directions too!!!  Work?  It was newsletter day!  Forget the work that needs to be done, I had to get all those newsletters done in between crisis and to the post office by 3:00!

I DID get lunch tho!  Linn and I had our normal lunch. I felt tired as I had been running all morning.  Linn did most of the talking.  Somehow we got on the subject of Rick Springfield, which led to a conversation of David Cassidy.  It turns out Linn and I back in the day had gone to see David in concert. (No, not together, we just happened to go to the same show back in the 70s.)  “Linn! I ended up in the first row and he came over and began to sing, “I Think I Love You” to me!!! ‘NO WAY!” She said. “Yes, it’s true!”  “And do you know what I did?”  “What?”  “As he was singing to me, I looked up and said, “Do you know Donny Osmond?”  He CRACKED UP! Could hardly get the song out!”  A true story! She laughed at me. “You always did like Donny better!”  “Yes, I did!” I said in a quiet, more light-hearted memory.  “Then I got to meet him. And he was so wonderful! It may have taken 30 years, but eventually, that dream came true!” I said reflecting on my life.  “I’ve had 3 dreams in my lifetime Linn. Of which 2 have come true.”  “Really!?!”  She asked.  “Yeah, the first one was to be on “The Price is Right.”  Then the 2^nd was to meet Donny Osmond.”  “What’s the 3^rd?”  She asked.  “I’m not telling.  It hasn’t come true, yet.”  She looks at me.  “Ahhhhh…..come on!” “Nope!”  I smile, it warms my heart to think of that 3^rd dream.   We quickly change the subject.  The dream remains safe in my heart.  Secure between God and I.

Hubby’s days continue to be incredibly stressful and beyond challenging!  I think his world feels as if it is falling apart for him right now. I wish I had answers but I don’t. I only know that all those plans you think are going to so nicely fall into place can get shaken up to the point you wonder what is up and what is down?!  Not that all of that matters, but something still feels amiss to me!  I thought I really had it understood what my next steps were to be, tonight, I realize, I don’t!  What pieces of the puzzle am I missing to know where the tomorrows are going to go?  Pieces, I just want to find the pieces!

I had a beautiful meditation hike tonight as the sun was setting.  I’m beginning to like this time an awful lot!  The air was so crisp and clear!  The praise music I listen to on these hikes inspires me. As I walked, I remembered all the feelings of 6 years ago and realized how much I have grown since then. The world didn’t end, it continues on, and I continue to grow.  No one said life was going to be fair or easy, but Jesus did say that if we will wear His yoke, it would be a lighter load.  Looking back at some of my darkest days I have to agree. Love was all around me in those days. A love that gave me SO much strength to make it through.  And the beauty of it when I think about it, was the love I felt from a man so far away would hold me a few months later and almost confirm what I felt on those lonely nights had been real. I can’t explain it, I only know it was some sort of miracle!  Or perhaps it was simply God’s love given me through someone else on this earth, God’s way of showing me against all odds and  impossibilities that in the end, love does in fact cross many miles, space, distance, and above all tragedy.  I think I’ll close on such a beautiful thought.

As the faith, love, and light lead me on.

Goodnight,

Sunshine

Goodnight Soul Mate:  Such memories!  And all these years later here we are. Still touching and sharing something across the distance and space and time.  Perhaps those days I am having a soul mate day are the days you need me there to surround you?  Perhaps there are days you need to feel that love from me as much as there are days I need to feel you near still?!  I guess I will just chalk all of this up to the miracle of love.  Do you know I believe you are the only one on this earth that I will ever find this with? This stuff is WAY too out there for me to have ever made up!  The feeling of you near, the knowing sometimes that something is wrong with you! I even remember one time I was parking my car, you weren’t even on my mind. Suddenly, I became away that you were in California recording.  It was the MOST bizarre feeling!  I sort of blew it off as some sort of mid-day dream or something.  A few weeks later, guess what?! I found out you WERE in California, recording with that old, old group you use to be in.  You were getting back together or something like that! It was SO bizarre! But stuff like this has been happening since we met. At first I thought I was going crazy! Ha ha!  Now I know! It’s official, I AM crazy!!! *kidding*  Now, I just chalk it up to a soul connection we share.  It’s SO unexplainable, but why fight it?  It happens, it must mean something?  All I know is on those days I really need to feel you near, somehow, you come and I feel you near.  Is it real?  Yeah, I believe it is because in the end, I believe the only thing that is real is love.  I send you that love and light now.  It’s not anything you did or I did, I think it is a gift sent to us from above.  Love remembered…….felt and found.  One day, we will be able to truly embrace it, till then, we will just hold it in our hearts.  Kay?  Have a beautiful tomorrow. Goodnight -  Love, Sunshine

In sorrow and memory of so many innocent lives lost this day.......Prayers for the families that survive.