The Day We Simply Prayed

A Morning We Didn’t Expect

Twenty-five years ago today, I sat in a small apartment and a normal morning turned into chaos.

We had just moved to a new city. Our two children were small. TV on in the background, the news broke into my toddler’s morning program and pulled the horror of that day into a morning meant for learning games from a hand puppet. My children were frustrated with the interruption in their routine. They did not understand what was happening, yet neither did I.

The Voice I Needed

I couldn’t reach my husband at work. I called a friend instead, a woman who had served in the military and now spent her days chasing toddlers just like I did.

“I don’t understand what is happening,” I told her, my voice shaking.

Trauma blocks the mind from accepting what it doesn’t want to believe. I know that now. That morning I only knew I needed to hear another voice.

I don’t remember most of what she said, but one sentence has stayed with me for twenty-five years.

“We can pray.”

Two Mothers, No Answers

So we did, right there on the phone, children scrambling around our feet, both of us aware that the world our kids would grow up in had shifted in a single morning.

Neither of us had answers. Neither of us fully grasped what was happening hundreds of miles away, in New York, in Washington, in a field in Pennsylvania. But we had each other’s voices and we had prayer, and it turned out to be enough to get through that hour…that day…that season.

Grief Wears Many Faces

Grief doesn’t always show up as a funeral or a diagnosis. Sometimes it shows up as the loss of a world you thought you understood. September 11 stripped away a certainty most of us had never questioned. It left behind fear, confusion, and a strange kind of togetherness between strangers and friends alike.

Twenty-five years later, I still remember two mothers on a phone call, unable to explain the unexplainable, choosing to pray instead of panic. It wasn’t a grand gesture or deep theology. It was two women admitting they had no answers and turning to the one place answers come from.

“We can pray.”

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What’s Coming Next

In the weeks ahead, I’ll be writing more here about grief, loss, and the surprising gifts hidden inside both. If today’s memory resonates, I think you’ll find yourself at home in what’s coming.

You Are Not Alone

If you’re walking through your own version of that morning today, a loss you can’t explain, a fear you can’t shake, a grief with no clear ending, I hope you have someone to call too. And if the words won’t come to the prayer you desperately wnat to pray, know that God simply desires your attention and understands the murmuring of your heart.

That, in and of itself, is prayer.

Scripture Anchor: Philippians 4:6-7