Today I sat across the room from a sweet 17-year-old in a therapy office.

I don’t know what brought her there, and that’s not my story to know. Still, I found myself quietly proud of her simply for showing up. There is something brave about being 17 and walking through a door because somewhere along the way you or someone who loves you decided that whatever you’re carrying deserves some help.

It was 96 degrees outside, and she was wearing a sweater. That alone made me smile. Across the front of her sweater was an American flag, and because today is September 11, it eventually became part of our conversation.

She told me she loves learning about September 11, 2001.

Her eyes were bright. Her spirit seemed optimistic. She looked across a therapy waiting room and started talking to a stranger about something she wasn’t even alive to witness.

For reasons I am still trying to put into words, she reminded me of myself.

Maybe it was her age. Maybe it was her curiosity. Maybe it was the fact that we were both sitting in a place people come when life has given them something they need help carrying. I don’t know her story, so I don’t want to write one for her. I just know that for a few minutes today, I found myself looking at a 17-year-old girl while remembering the girl I was almost exactly 25 years ago.

On September 11, 2001, I was less than a month away from my 17th birthday.

I wonder what she would have thought of that girl.

That girl lived alone in a little trailer in a trailer park. She had been on her own since she was 15. She drove an old ’80s-model Buick LeSabre that was basically a boat on wheels, and on that particular Tuesday morning, every station on its radio seemed to be talking about airplanes and buildings in New York.

I could tell something terrible had happened, but I didn’t understand it yet.

There were no smartphones in our hands giving us instant videos, notifications, and explanations. I was just a 16-year-old driving to school, listening to voices on the radio that sounded scared and shocked while trying to piece together what they were talking about.

Then I walked into English class and saw the television.

That’s where I remember understanding that something was very, very wrong.

One of my friends said their uncle worked in those buildings. They began to cry, and of course, the rest of us began to cry too. We were teenagers in a classroom in Texas watching something happen hundreds of miles away, but suddenly it didn’t feel far away at all.

I remember the heaviness of that morning. I remember knowing that something had changed even though I didn’t have the maturity or life experience to understand what that change would mean.

I remember something else now that I probably couldn’t have articulated then:

The world suddenly looked as broken as I already felt inside.

My own life had already taught me about fear and uncertainty. I was trying to go to school, work, pay bills, survive, and somehow become an adult before I had finished being a child. I had questions I couldn’t answer and pain I didn’t know what to do with. Suddenly, it seemed like everyone around me was asking questions they couldn’t answer too.

What I remember most about the days that followed isn’t only the fear.

I remember watching people reach for one another.

People grieved together. They prayed together. They gave blood. They checked on their neighbors. They helped strangers. For a little while, it seemed like people understood that another person’s pain was reason enough to move toward them.

Somewhere in that same season, people began moving toward me too.

There was a little church down the road that became an important part of my life. It wasn’t a perfect church, and the people weren’t perfect people. Honestly, I think that helped me feel safer there. I was already afraid I wouldn’t be “good enough” for church. My life didn’t look neat or particularly churchy. I was a teenage girl living alone in a trailer park trying to survive, and I certainly didn’t have a polished testimony to offer anyone.

Thankfully, they didn’t ask me for one. They just made room for me. Over the next year and a half, that church became a refuge. Sometimes love looked like a meal. Sometimes it was a hug, an invitation, a conversation, or simply someone being glad I had walked through the door. They couldn’t undo what had happened in my life. They didn’t have answers for all of my questions.

They simply made sure I wasn’t alone.

Twenty-five years later, I think I understand better why those memories are so connected for me. September 11 taught an entire generation something about how quickly the world can change. What happened afterward also showed me something about what human beings are capable of doing when the world does change.

We can move toward each other.

That doesn’t mean we stop asking hard questions or having difficult conversations. I have plenty of opinions, and anyone who knows me knows I love a conversation that makes me think. But I don’t believe Jesus needs our politics to prove who He is. He told us to love our neighbors. He even told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.

Those are easy words to put on something and much harder words to practice when we’re afraid, angry, grieving, or convinced we’re right.

That little church practiced them with me.

Maybe that’s why that 17-year-old in the American flag sweater affected me so much today.

She was learning about a day I remember living. She was almost exactly the age I was when I lived it. She was sitting in a place where people come for help, talking openly and brightly to a stranger across the room. I don’t know what she has survived, what she’s struggling with, or what she’ll become. I only know that I was grateful she was there.

For just a moment, it felt like I was looking across 25 years.

At 16, almost 17, I was a scared girl watching a broken world on a television screen while carrying a brokenness of my own.

At 41, I was sitting in a therapy office looking at another 17-year-old whose eyes were bright, whose spirit was hopeful, and who wanted to understand a history she hadn’t lived.

Maybe what I was witnessing is simply what I hope every generation gets to do for the one coming behind it.

Remember what happened.
Tell the truth about it. Learn from it. Then choose what we carry forward. I hope we carry forward the part where people showed up.

I hope our churches remember the teenager who walks through the door and may be carrying a story no one knows. I hope we notice the person sitting across the waiting room. I hope we remain curious enough to talk to strangers. I hope we can disagree without forgetting the humanity of the person across from us. I hope when the world gives us reasons to retreat into fear, we keep finding reasons to move toward one another instead.

Twenty-five years ago, when the world felt like it was falling apart, some ordinary people in a messy little church moved toward a lonely girl from a trailer park.

They probably had no idea she would still remember it 25 years later.

But she does.

Today, sitting across from a 17-year-old in an American flag sweater on a 96-degree September day, she remembered it all over again.

Instead of bombing buildings and bringing harm…my hope is that we can sit across from someone over two decades younger and decide to be builders of great legacies. Go love those around you. Go look for ways to make this world a more loving experience.

Love Steph