Everyone is having memorials about 9/11 and I wanted to post this yesterday but ended up letting the day slip by.
You will never forget where you were or what you were doing that day when you heard that a plane had hit the towers. I was driving to work when it came over the radio, and at the time I just thought it was a random accident, a stray plane that had gone off-course. When they told me it was an attack on the U.S. I thought it was a joke, who would attack us? As they replayed the details over and over I thought, who can stand to listen to this all day long? I didn't realize how much it would change the way I look at life, or how close I came to losing a friend.
Mark was a musician who had been accepted to study with some of the best voice teachers in New York. He wasn't just any kind of musician, he was a male soprano. They are very rare I'm told, and his gift was far beyond what I had ever seen or heard. When he sang, his voice soared high into notes I can only dream about hitting, and it was almost like an angel singing. With his wife and two children staying in Tennessee, he moved to New York to pursue his dream of singing opera. I didn't stay in contact with him much during that time, but I kept him in my prayers and thought of him often.
Soon he wrote me an email saying he was driving down for a visit in August, and he wanted to make sure I was going to come and catch up while he was in town. I kept saying that I was going to come visit him, that we would go to Dollywood and watch for meteors at Clingman's Dome, but time got away from me, as it has a tendency to do. Soon it was time for him to go back to New York, and I hadn't once gone to visit him. I was a little disappointed, but didn't think much of it because we still had email.
Then September 11 happened and everything stopped. I didn't learned until months later that he was supposed to go back the week before; that if he had left when he was supposed to, he would have been inside the towers waiting to start his day and probably would not have made it out alive. He was supposed to be there that day.
He went back to finish his studies, but now lives in his home state of Louisiana. I'll never know how much courage it took for him to go back there and see what his fate might have been. I thank God for sparing his life every time I think of that day, and for a crappy rental car that wouldn't start. I know without a doubt that my God, my savior Jesus Christ, saved Mark's life that day for a reason, that everything that happened that day was for a reason. It may not seem fair or make any sense at all, but life's not fair now is it.
Everyone knows someone that was affected by the tragedy that happened that day. Everyone has a story. This is mine, actually Mark's, so thanks for listening.
