9/11/01 started off as an ordinary day for me. My two oldest sons were in school. My mom had just picked up my 10-month-old for the day and I was headed to my [part-time] job at Hanes Mall as an Este Lauder beauty advisor.
9:15, I got in the car and turned on the radio. Strange, why is Katie Couric on 89.3? Something about an airplane crash into a tower. I was thinking an airport tower. A few seconds later and I learn it is the twin towers in NYC and both have been hit by airplanes.
I'm stunned, I'm shocked. Immediately, I knew this was an act of war.
I begin to pray. Raying to my God whom I've kind of neglected over the years. A God who, would he really know me since I had forgotten him?
As I approach Stratford Road reports are coming in - another plane has struck the Pentagon. I am in disbelief. What do I do? Go sell makeup or go get my kids and hunker down?
Slowly I enter the Belk parking lot. A 4th plane is missing and feared hijacked. I walk into the store and it is eerily quiet. I get to the makeup counter and my coworkers were in tears. Since I had missed all TV coverage, they tell me what it was like to watch the 2nd plane out of nowhere strike the 2nd tower. We are scared. We begin praying.
It's after 11. No one is at the mall. We get updates from the Lancome counter on the towers. One has fallen. Airports nationwide are calling in all planes.
One lady comes up to me. She is ticked her flight was cancelled and wants a makeover. "Our nation has been attacked and you need a matching foundation?" I am thinking. She buys a lipstick and heads back to PTI airport to catch a later flight.
That's when it hits me what is really important to my life, and if today is the end, where does that leave me?
The mall closes early and I go pick up my kids. I'm driving down a deserted I-40 and I ask my Lord to let me come back into His life. I beg Him for forgiveness and for the silence I had bestowed on Him. If today is the end, I ask Him to please remember me in His paradise.
9/11 was a spiritual reality-check for me. Evil became real, not a myth. I really learned on 9/11 what matters in my life and whose lives I want to matter in.
9/11/01 - An evil day for sure but not really as evil when the end of your time comes and you have not given thought to what really matters in this all-too-short life we live out.
Oh, by the way, Estee Lauder really is the greatest foundation, but it's more important what foundation your heart is built on. That's what I learned that day.
Trinity Hanson