Stepping Forward Together after Tragedy
By Jessica Brodie
Have you ever experienced a loss no one else shared quite like you? I’ve been there. The loneliness and grief can feel oppressive, and you find yourself almost subconsciously seeking out others who might have experienced a glimmer of the same pain so you feel a little less alone.
It’s a little more bearable when you are grieving a loss alongside others whose pain feels on par with yours. I remember the devastation I felt when my Aunt Marsha passed away a few years ago. She’d always been like a second mom to me, and it helped to gather with my own mom—her sister—and her many other family and friends in the aftermath of her sudden death.
I remember feeling much the same 20 years ago, after the horrible, life-changing impact of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. My kids, who are teens, have learned about 9/11 as a national historical event, but those of us old enough to have lived it recall it a different way. It wasn’t “just” a historical moment but a raw, personal, vulnerable time of grief.
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I was a fundraiser in my mid-twenties working with a nonprofit organization in Miami, Florida, and I’d gone to work late that morning so I could avoid rush hour. The TV was playing while I put on my makeup, and the news flashed in that a plane had struck the one of the World Trade Center buildings.
“How in the world?” I remember thinking. “Was there a malfunction? Could the pilot not see the building?”
Not long after, another plane crashed, this time into the second World Trade Center tower. A shiver settled over me as I realized… This wasn’t right. Something bad was happening, something horribly, terribly wrong.
Eyes glued to the screen, I and everyone else that morning soon learned the crashes had been an orchestrated attack by terrorists upon America. Thousands of innocent lives were lost.
The hours and days that followed were surreal. I remember deciding to head into the office that morning, a commute that took me past the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. Planes had all been called in for landing about that time, and as I drove, they zoomed overhead, one after another. It felt like World War III or the end of the world, or both. Fear and doom weighed heavy as I drove, and finally I just turned around. The office wasn’t important right now.
As events unfolded, I found myself craving other people. Always a bit shy and introverted, this surprised me. But being with others, whether those I knew or complete strangers, felt like a balm. As the weeks passed, cars and homes started sporting American flags. There was a resounding undercurrent of unity and togetherness in the South Florida community in which I lived, where before it used to feel vastly segregated over racial, language, and ethnicity differences.
Now, two decades later, it almost feels like a miracle to recall God’s grace and mercy, God’s love working among us, settling peace upon our hearts, minds, and souls as we collectively walked through the grief and healing process as a nation. Through His compassion, this was not the end of the world, after all. Four years later, I’d go on to have my son, then my daughter two years later. New hope and beauty blossomed after this dark time.
We walked through it all hand in hand as a people, connected in solidarity. And 20 years later we look back, remembering.
Remembering how we held together by holding together.
Roughly 2,000 years ago, Jesus told His disciples He was giving them a new command: “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34 NIV).
A way we all love each other is when we gather together, whether in mourning or in joy.
Jesus also said He, too, is with us always, “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them” (Matthew 18:20).
We don’t need to go through life alone, solitary and isolated. In his writings to the early church, the apostle Paul reminded us that we are the body of Christ, and He is our head (1 Corinthians 12:12-27). We suffer and rejoice together, and Jesus is with us in it all.
That’s an important lesson I cling to after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and in looking at the life and ministry of Jesus and His people.
If you are in a place of grief right now, remember that you are not alone. We walk together. And Jesus is with us every step of the way.
