April 19 Reflections

It struck me so odd this morning as I tuned in my television for that annual ritual - how time insists on moving forward, whether we permit it to or not. It still just doesn't really seem like all that long ago. Twelve years ago today, it was the biggest news story in every American city and across much of the world. It was so surreal, so very shocking. But in the dozen years since the Murrah Federal Bombing 15 miles from my home and only 3 days before my wedding day, we've experienced an even bigger atrocity in 9/11. And RIGHT NOW, we are processing the massacre at Virginia Tech. And in between the two, there have been a multitude of other life defining moments, both public and private. The Iraq war, the Indian Tsunami and the flooding in New Orleans, political corruption, miscarriages, weddings, divorces, deaths and new babies. Life indeed goes on. In fact, one of our very own local stations ran regular programming today for the first year since "the bombing," a term whose reference is automatically understood in these parts.

I didn't feel the bombing like everyone else did. I was sleeping in to recuperate from the emotional exhaustion of preparing for our wedding while coping with my fiance's own grief. His dad had passed away suddenly just 12 days earlier. Our out-of-town guests experienced it though. Anyone within a 50 mile radius and not asleep when it happened has a vivid description to share. It was that powerful. My slumber turned out to be a blessing in disguise. At the time of the blast, I was supposed to be at the downtown courthouse securing our wedding license. The courthouse was located directly next door to the explosion, and two people inside were killed by falling debris.

In a realistic display of the sickness that sometimes lurks in our society, we were not able to locate an open courthouse anywhere in our state for two days, due to copycat threats at nearly all of them. Finally on Friday, less than 24 hours before "I do's," a sweet country-girl court clerk agreed to stay 20 minutes past quitting time to issue us our license 45 minutes away. After that she would have to leave to meet her family for a school function. We drove 90 mph most of the way and still barely made it. As we made our way back to the parking lot with that all important piece of paper, we were told to stay in our car as we witnessed a cavalcade of black Suburbans enter the premises in a quiet formal line. We wouldn't know until the 10:00 news that it was Timothy McVeigh. The door you've seen him exit on television as people boo in the background is the same one we entered to get legal proof of our impending marriage.

Two years later, my newlywed status was fading even as I was expecting our first child. Feeling clueless, we signed up for "baby classes" at the hospital. I was a new Christian and had shared the Gospel easily with my family but I was very much struggling to speak to strangers about Him. I really just struggled to speak to anyone new to me, period. But in that class, I stepped out on faith. I don't remember anything of the actual conversation, only that I apparently found the restroom to be the perfect locale to tell her about the love of Christ! We laugh about it now. We laugh about a lot now! God took my meager, ill-delivered effort and gave to me a wonderful friend. Arlene is classy, attractive, articulate, intelligent, caring and passionate - about Jesus, her family, the moral state of our society, her friends and the unique challenges of teenagers - in that order. And she is an Oklahoma City Murrah bombing survivor. Her name is etched on the one remaining wall of the building left as part of the memorial to commemorate the strength and resolve of those who lived through it.

Shortly after the bombing, she became alcoholic dependent. She was newly married as well. She lost almost 20 co-workers, her friends, all on one day. She herself had been completely blinded for over three hours and her husband had taken nearly six hours to find her in all the chaos. Her desk sat on the fourth floor on the right side of the hole that you have no doubt seen on television. She was there that morning to serve our country in the offices of the U.S. Army with her enlistment ending just 10 days later. She had gotten up to retrieve coffee for her male boss only 20 seconds earlier. She once told me that she would have foolishly considered his request to be chauvinistic toward women only a couple of years earlier, but she too had recently trusted her heart to Jesus Christ, and she had become softer, less bitter and more caring. At least until she was challenged by that day. Had she not gone for coffee that day, I would never have had my friend. Her husband would never have had his two amazing boys who are trained in the Word daily. They are one reason I find hope for the society my children will live in. They are being taught to love, really truly love others, by someone who walks the walk. Someone who prayed her way off the alcohol, recommitted herself to God, began traveling the country to publicly speak her testimony, finally found the courage to expose the scars she had hidden under carefully planned clothing for several years, pen-pal counseled with victims of 9/11 (still does) and yes, forgave her tormentor completely.

She didn't go to the Memorial service today. She no longer needs to. There is no chance she'll ever forget that Spring day that started so beautifully, but she no longer dwells on it either. These days she spends working with the teenagers at her church, as I have done for many years at mine. We try to help them with the fear that a Virginia Tech tragedy could happen to them. We try to help them realize that goodness has to start somewhere, if not with lazy parents for some of them or bullies for others or in the awful, extreme cases of Oklahoma City and Virginia Tech, with an irrational, selfish murderer, then it is THEY who have the power to determine what kind of society they will produce. They get to decide if vindication is worth the down spiral of violence it creates. They have the choice to do good or to do evil. And they have the capacity, but only through Christ, to love those who don't necessarily deserve it, rather than choose revenge. THEY ARE CAPABLE of so much more than they often get the credit for. But the vast majority of them need a lot of encouragement to believe that. They - young people - when given the chance, often humble and amaze me. They are not the sum of a few misled evil perpetrators.

On this anniversary of the first modern day terrorism event on U.S. soil (except Pearl Harbor, perhaps?), in the fresh aftermath of the senseless carnage at Virginia Tech, from a woman whose been the very target and victim of such hatred on April 19, 1995, my friend Arlene, please just smile at the pimple-faced guy behind the counter at McDonald's next time you're there. Ask the teen aged cart handler in the Walmart parking lot how he's doing today and then really listen. Encourage the emerging young adults of today that they are capable and not helpless. Help them to know that they matter, because who they become certainly DOES matter. It matters a whole lot. We can not separate ourselves from those we find distasteful. They are our mission field. They are the future co-workers and neighbors of our own children. They absolutely matter.

May God bless each person who mourns a tragic death today. May He bring comfort to all those who grieve the loss of ANY loved one.