911 From Lady Liberty

911 From Lady Liberty
By Jenni Bettelli
The morning of 911 2001

On the morning of 9-11-2001, I sat on my coffee table in my living room, mouth agape with disbelief as to the events my eyes were seeing. As smoke billowed behind Lady Liberty I couldn't help but cry.
I grabbed my notebook and penned these words so quickly it practically spilled onto the page.

Alone she has always stood in the middle of the bay.
Never so alone as she would feel today.

As the sun shone brightly across the morning sky,
The torch of Lady Liberty proudly held high.

The sounds of the city ring clearly in her ears,
The majesty of a nation soon to be seared.

She could never have imagined the travesty to come her way,
As she securely watched from a distance in the bay.

Sounds all around her, so familiar everyday,
Then the roaring of an engine would begin the melee.

Terrified she watches, helpless from where she stands.
Destruction all around her, as fear fills the land.

She, though, untouched, watches with tears,
As the security of a nation we have held dear,
Is now shaken to it’s core by the acts of cowards.
Then it happens again and again in two short hours.

Her feet firmly planted in the waters off the shore,
Would never be moved by these acts of war.

Though shaken as she was
She knows in whom we trust.

For it is written across our nation,
God is our firm foundation.

9-11-2009 Jon leaves for Afghanistan.

I was thinking about where I was one year ago today.

It was one of those nights that I couldn’t completely wrap my mind around.
Talking to my son the night he was leaving for a warzone.
How surreal.
How do I reconcile that the baby I once held, fed, protected, was now protecting me.

How incredible to contemplate.

Oh how much I have learned through the 7 months of deployment and thereafter.
Prayer works- It’s more than just the answered prayers that make prayer work. It’s the discipline of learning how to really pray. Its hearing God’s voice in the middle of your prayer. Shutting up long enough to hear it.
Its understanding that even if something terrible happens I am held in his hands. It’s knowing that prayers that are not answered to your specifications mean that GODS SPECIFICATIONS ARE BETTER!!!
I learned that God is God no matter what. Daniel 3:17-18 Even in the furnace God can deliver. But if he does not. I will still serve him.
This scripture took me to a place in my spiritual life that has changed me forever. I have always believed it but now I got to actually experience it.

I learned that this deployment was as much for my growth in the Lord as it was for Jon.
I learned to lean on my husband and not others, something that sometimes gets forgotten in 20 years of being together. He was a rock everyday. Days that I thought I couldn’t breathe another breath because fear gripped me, he breathed for me. There were days when the media would attack my mind and my thoughts and sometimes Kevin couldn’t be there,so he called my best friend Laura and she, without hesitation, came to me and prayed peace over me.

Thoughts of that time will always live in my mind. But fear was erased and replaced, with trust.
Trust that I am held in the cleft of the rock. I am safely snug under his mighty wing which is stronger than I will ever understand.

I see where he walked beside me and I see where he carried me. I felt him there everyday. I know my God loves me and I know he loves Jon. I see him walking beside Jon and I see when he’s carrying him.
Oh Gracious God you are not just something I believe in. You are not just in my heart. You are my breath, my heartbeat, my every footstep, my beautiful Savior, you are my life.
What a great year this has been, to have been held in the very palm of my Gods hand. I believe I will stay right there.

Today I sat and thought about where I was one year ago.