There are moments in life where time seems to bend, and you realize your steps are being guided by something much bigger than yourself. For me, that realization spans two cities, two historic tragedies, and a lifetime of being spared.
In 1993, I was living in New York and working for the Port Authority—the very agency that owned the World Trade Center. On Friday, February 26, I went on my lunch break. I was heading to One World Trade Center, about to step onto the elevator to go to the credit union on the 44th floor. Right before I could step in, a man stopped me and asked for directions. I paused, spending about two minutes helping him and pointing him in the right direction.
In those exact two minutes, the world shook. A loud boom echoed through the complex. A truck bomb had just detonated in the underground garage. If I hadn’t stopped to help that stranger, I would have been trapped in that elevator or high up on the 44th floor in the smoke and chaos. Instead, I immediately turned around, rushed down to the subway, and caught the E train back to the Port Authority Bus Terminal where I worked. It turned out to be the very last train to leave the World Trade Center station that day.
That evening, deeply shaken but safe, I sat in my living room with my family of three little children (son who was 9 years and 7 months, daughter who was 5 years old and 8 months, and my youngest daughter who was 4 years and 10 months (preemie baby born 12 weeks early).
On the television, CBS was airing its annual broadcast of “The Wizard of Oz.” As Dorothy searched for her way home through a terrifying storm, it felt like the ultimate form of comfort and emotional healing for us. I was home. I was safe.
A few years later, in 1996, I got married for a second time and moved to Miami. But the sky followed me. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, while I was still in New York, I used to have incredibly vivid dreams about airplanes. They were so intense that I often found myself praying, asking God to prevent airplanes from colliding.
Then came Tuesday, September 11, 2001.
I was scheduled for a minor laparoscopic procedure—an electrophysiology heart test done through the veins in my groin—because my heart rate was always dangerously fast, running in the triple digits. At the time, I was under an immense amount of personal stress. My marriage was in an uncertain place, and just the year before, my youngest daughter had gone through a horrific trauma. The weight of that pain and difficulty felt heavy on my heart.
I was in the shower getting ready that morning when the first plane hit the North Tower. I was frozen in shock. It felt like I was reliving my vivid dreams in the exact way I had seen them years before. As the second plane hit, and then Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, the world changed forever. The very buildings I had escaped in 1993 were gone.
I still went to the hospital for my procedure that day. The atmosphere was surreal. Every television in the hospital was on, including right inside the procedure room. As I lay there, I watched the screen as the doctors guided a camera through my veins up to my heart. I remember praying so hard, asking God to help the doctors focus on me and not make mistakes despite the historic, terrifying distraction unfolding on the screens around them. God answered that prayer and carried me through.
Lo, these many years later on the 25th year anniversary when our world was changed, I look back on these events with profound humility. My life was spared in 1993 by a two-minute delay of kindness. My heart was watched over in 2001 during a global catastrophe and a season of deep family heartbreak. Since those heavy days, I have learned the power of taking deeper, slower breaths. Most days now, my heart rate stays safely below 100.
I still lift up prayers for the safety of planes and the healing of the world, deeply thankful to still be here, breathing peacefully, and telling my story.