I'll never forget the feelings. So many, and so crazy.
1. I've never even heard my GRANDPARENTS say that they remembered foreigners attacking US Soil.
2. I was one month and 6 day married.
3. I was certain that I was going to war.
4. SO certain, that I began considering how I would join, which branch I would join, and how soon we could get pregnant so that there could be SOME sort of family started, if the worst happened.
5. I wonder how so many others like me felt years before when we joined wars that we were not "part of."
6. Though I knew what I THOUGHT he should do, and what he PROBABLY would do, I honestly wondered what President G.W. Bush would do.
7. I thanked God repeatedly all day long that Al (thank you for the internet al) was NOT the "leader."
8. I thanked God all day that none of my family or friends were in or around there.
9. Andrea, who usually worked her BRAINS out of her everliving head during school, actually laid on the couch (somehow we managed, I don't know, don't even ask) with me that night and watched all the coverage and enjoyed being together for fear that we soon wouldn't.

I'm still so thankful and grateful. It's so hard to imagine, guys who were younger than me, like in JR HIGH while I was graduating High School, went over there to give those punks what they deserved. Guys who were the little brother of friends of mine who we actually picked on and made fun of, they went and blew up cities and terrorists (and some not, I know, save it for Rush) and all sorts of other "targets." They went over there fresh out of High School. And I can't say I didn't understand, b/c maybe the scariest thing I felt on that day was #10. In two ways.

Like I said @ theLoft the other night, there is this scale that Andrea and I use to communicate levels of interest, or intensity, or to somehow say "it's THIS important to me." Dave Ramsey just calls it "the scale of 10." and when andrea says something is a 10, I'm all ears, drop everything, this is so important that nothing, not a job, not a friend, not family, NOTHING else matters as much as a 10. Truthfully, everything 7 and up is like this for my spouse. But you get the idea, it helps us to communicate to one another how very important or unimportant something is to each other. So, this day, in 2001, was a 10 / 10 for me. I thought that it was going to change the course of my life forever, maybe even irrevocably.

That was scary enough, but the other 10 was the feeling of revenge or justice I might even call it that seemed to pulse through me w/ every beat of my heart. It was like the more I watched/listened to the news (I still had work installing cable modems for charter) the more I wanted to be part of the solution. Or, the more I wanted to be over there blowing stuff up. I wanted to be a part of it. I couldn't believe it. I wanted to sign up for something that I thought @ the time, could mean death. Crazy...probably...but isn't that what discipleship is supposed to be like?

anyway, more cutesy videos of my favorite boy who came @ the perfect time, thanks to our faithful US Military. Ask me every SINGLE time I pay taxes. property, state, fed, sales, whatever. I know it doesn't all go to the US Armed Forces, but you can bet I'm sure glad that whatever does go there WENT THERE! =)

Andrea informs me that "the scale of 10" is called the Likert scale (and apparently it's "LICK-ert")