In Memory of .....

WARNING:For some of you this post might be a little to graphic, and painful to read.

"For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their tresspasses, neither will you Father forgive your trespasses" Matthew 6:14-15

I was at my real estate office on a Tuesday; and, like every other Tuesday, my co-workers were also arriving for our weekly meeting. We laugh over the coffee pot, who gets the chocolate filled donut, who took the blueberry muffin, teasing each other about getting (or not getting a listing).
We take our seats, a phone rings, a friend cries as she listens on the phone and yells turn on the radio. "A plane has just hit the twin towers". We quietly start questioning what happened when we hear, the pentagon has just had a plane flown into it. Shock. A plane has gone down in Pennsylvania. A second plane has been flown into the towers. Each of us knows at that point that this was not an accident. Fear. Numbness. Anxiety. We try to carry on but in the end we give up and go home. After: we hold a friends hand because her daughter was supposed to be on the train that pulls into the underground of the towers when the planes hit. A friend's husband works on the 3rd floor of one of the towers. My nephew (15 at the time) was in school just three blocks away. None of us knew where they were. No communication. We had to wait. And wait. And wait.
I went home and watched the TV for hours. Waiting for the call that our dear Kevin was safe. It did not come until 9 that night. He had walked with his friends across Manhattan to a friends house until it could be planned how to get him and a few friends out to their home in Staten Island. Numbness set in. So many lives changed in just a few minutes.
The next Saturday was Rosh Hashana. My husband was raised Jewish and still celebrates the holidays. We were on the highway passing the dump when we realized at the same time that all the white tents, all the people in clean suits, and the massive amount of ambulances, and hearses, and rescue trucks were all there for the same reason. They were sorting remains. The reality of what happened the Tuesday before started to become a reality. But, the real reality was when we drove over the last hill to our family's house - the towers were gone, the smoke was rising, there was a hole where one of my favorite sites was. And yes, there were smells. One's I never want to experience again. And I began to cry, and the crying and shaking wouldn't stop. My husband ended up getting his sister and she took me and my daughter around the corner to where there was a total view of the devastation. She said look and see. Look until you can hold it in your heart and remember that this is what hate is and we now have to learn how to deal with this awful thing that has happened to all of us. And I cried and lashed out at God telling him that whoever did this should never be forgiven and be damned for all eternity.
I know that to be forgiven by our Lord, one must believe in our Lord and Savior. I am not the judge of others. God is the judge. Because I can't forgive, does Christ not forgive us? Or do we ask him for mercy and forgiveness for our actions and thoughts and know that he is always with us? I choose the later.

True to Ourselves

Do not withhold Your tender mercies from me, O Lord; Let Your lovingkindness and Your truth continually preserve. me. For innumerable evils have surrounded me; My iniquities have overtaken me, so that I am not able to look up;They are more than the hairs of my head; Therefore my heart fails me. Psalm 40:11-12. (Women of Faith Devotional Bible)

For the past few days I have started aching in my heart again for things I have done that I am not proud of. My head tells me that because I have pulled away from God and not done all of his will; and, my punishment is the bad things that are happening. Now, understand that this is my head talking, not my heart. My heart tells me that God has never left me, that he does not "punish. I have always dealt with my guilt by saying that God is punishing me. Reality, and age, have made me understand that this is not God doing this, but me living with the consequences of actions and decisions that I have made.

Thinking back I am sure that each of you has felt the same way at some point in your life too. We are each human. We find an excuse with living with ourselves when we have made a decision we are not proud of. But, we need to remind ourselves, God will not withhold his love, his mercy, his forgivness for we are each his children and we are forgiven.