She got the call today, one out of the grey
And when the smoke cleared, it took her breath away
She said she didn’t believe ‘it could happen to me’
I guess we’re all one phone call from our knees
We’re gonna get there soon
–Mat Kearney, “Closer to Love“
Ten years ago, on September 10th, 2001, I boarded a train and headed west and things in the country were fine. On September 11th, 2001, still on the train, the trajectory of the country changed. Somewhere on that four-day trip to Denver, I called my parents to let them know that I was OK, that the trains were packed with frantic people, and that a train derailment between Sacramento and Salt Lake City was the train headed west, not east. They were relieved to get that phone call.
The tenth was good.
The tenth is always good. It is the day before. The day before someone you loved died. The day before you lost your job. The day before the accident. The day before the assault. The day before you get the diagnoses. The day before the bad news, the truth revealed, the hopes crushed. The day before your entire life collapses.
The tenth was good, but I didn’t know it at the time. I didn’t know the eleventh was coming, so I wasted the value of the tenth. The tenth is worth more than all the gold in the world once you find yourself in the eleventh.
The eleventh is always coming.
How you handle the eleventh, the twelfth, the thirteenth…do you hit your knees or raise a fist in anger?
I think of Good Friday, and am reminded that even though Thursday might have seemed better, Resurrection Sunday was on the way.
We can’t live our lives on the tenth. The eleventh goes along with it, unforeseen and unstoppable. When it does, though it seems impossible, Resurrection Sunday comes, too. It might be three days or a tenth anniversary, but it comes.
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