We had been back in Lincoln for about four months and were starting to house-shop. Not in a serious way, mind you, but a dreamy kind of way… Perhaps a brick home would be nice. In this neighborhood or this one? Close to our church, if at all possible. Someone, one of our parents perhaps, mentioned getting pre-approval for a home loan, so we scheduled an appointment for Tuesday, September 11 at 9:00am.

Good Morning America was on our television and I recall the program switching from planned material to live footage of one of the Twin Towers. Black clouds were billowing from the building and I wracked my brain to remember the World Trade Center from a visit to New York City when I was a junior in high school. I’ll never forget the shock in Charlie Gibson’s voice, and in my own being, when on live television a plane flew into the second tower. The plane looked teeny, unsubstantial, like a small commuter plane. At this point the newscasters had no idea what was going on, and Jeremy and I had an appointment with a bank loan officer.

Slightly unnerved by the morning’s events, we walked into the bank’s meeting room and began the paperwork for pre-approval. Sometime in the next half hour our loan officer walked back in to our room and reported that the Pentagon had been hit and that the World Trade Center had fallen. Fallen. In those moments my mind couldn’t grasp the horror, nor the meaning, of these statements. All of a sudden America, the stable safe country I had grown up in, became a war zone and it was scary. There I was, in the absolute middle of the US, and I was worried about each of my family members. I wanted to take a head count, to call each person I loved, to check up and make sure they were alive and safe and well. The feelings of insecurity, death and destruction were unleashed.

Within the next few hours, other feelings became apparent. Solidarity. Unity. Patriotism. Undying spirit. Dependence on one another and God.

I stayed glued to my TV set for who knows how long after the initial attacks. Information became my top priority and I’d turn off the news for only a few minutes in unsatisfactory attempts to clear my mind of grief. I don’t remember ever crying about it all, but I do recall feeling so shocked that tears seemed meaningless. I felt far away from the devastation in NYC, DC, and Pennsylvania—and yet altogether too close to the terrorists who had made their way to my country.