re:create

This Year's Youth Events

High School Mission Trip

Transforming Fear

This week as we remember  9/11/01, I have heard people talk about remembering, honoring, forgiving, reaching out to foreigners at work and school.  But what about those who do not have memories of what happened 10 years ago?  My twelve-year-old son was required by his Social Studies teacher to design a quilt piece that represents how he feels about that day.  He was two at the time of the attacks and because we didn’t have a television and only dial-up internet (I know, crazy right?) he has no memory of it.  So, he and I talked about how a friend of mine from college, who lived in Manhattan at the time, came and stayed with us from September until almost Christmas. 
Lars was, and is, a strong and confident man, but he after 9/11 he was visibly shaken in a way I had never known anyone to be.  I knew he had to be if he was ready to leave the city of his birth, the best city in the world to him and come to live in the little town of Bethlehem.  Even two months later, Lars was quiet and withdrawn, with a picture from the New York Times hanging on the wall in the guest bedroom where he was staying.  The photograph was eerie.  Unlike so many of the others printed at the time of the towers and fire and destruction, this one was the NY skyline at dawn, almost beautiful with a rosy glow.  But filled with smoke and the absence of the towers.  Even after our friend healed and was able to move back to his apartment just a mile from ground zero, the picture stayed on the wall as a reminder to us of what was more than just an act that caused bodily damage.  It also caused fear and anxiety in so many.   Those who had not lost friends or loved ones or homes lost something intangible:  the peace and security of ordinary, boring life.
So, while my son has no real memory of or real connection to the events, he wants to understand why it happened and how he should feel.   Maybe he means to ask:
“What is an acceptable feeling?”
 “Is it still ok to be afraid?”
 “Is it ok to worry about whether it could happen again?”
  “Can I be angry at the people who flew the planes?” 
I will spend as much time as he needs to continue to talk about how he feels and maybe even find a way to draw those feelings.  Through this project, I have realized that so much of his questioning was related to fear and I wonder, what is the opposite of fear?  I believe it is faith and that faith is an action that requires me to continually give over my anxieties and expectations to the care of God.  To trust that I have no power over what may happen tomorrow but that I am right where I need to be today.  And it brings me peace.
How has YOUR faith helped transform your fears?