From 9/11 to Covid-19: An Open Letter to the Class of 2020

A little bit ago, all your hopes, dreams and aspirations seemed to be running full steam ahead. You were just months away from graduation and all the excitement that comes with it: senior prank plans were in the works and pretty soon you’d be sending out all those graduation announcements and party dates. But all of that quickly changed as your news feed began to shift daily, and one big fat word was stamped in front of all of it: CANCELED.

I can’t pretend to know what it is like to have graduation, prom and every other celebratory moment canceled my senior year of high school. I can’t say that for four years, I looked forward to getting recognized on Senior Night of my favorite sport or extracurricular activity, only to have the entire season wiped out before its start. Bottom line, I can’t claim to know what it’s like to be you during this COVID-19 outbreak.

Seniors and their families all over the world are scrambling to find alternative ways to celebrate their loved one’s accomplishment.

But as a member of the Class of 2002, I can tell you what it’s like to be a senior during one of the most uncertain periods in our country’s history. And I would like to share with you how it changed the entire trajectory of my life. It may be too soon or insensitive for me to say that one day it will all work out for good. So I won’t. All I will do is share my story in hopes that it will open your heart to what may be.

On September 11, 2001, I walked into my first-period class: newspaper. It was my favorite class in the history of all classes. In it, were all my friends. We did more goofing off than creating news stories, but when we did, they were epic. We were charged with documenting history through the current events happening in our school and our world: it was important work. (Much like the work you have been up to the last four, if not 12 years of your schooling.)

The day seemed to have started like any other: the rushing out the door with a piece of toast in hand, parking in the senior lot, trying to maintain some semblance of organization in my locker, grabbing a notebook and pen before slamming the green metal door shut and catching up with friends as I rushed to first period. But moments later, this morning would prove to be like no other.

As the hum of the news began trickling through our school, our beloved Mrs. Davis was prompted to turn on the television that usually played our morning announcements. There before our eyes, we listened to a frightened national telecaster share the news that a Boeing 767 had flown into the World Trade Center, one of two iconic skyscrapers in New York City that housed hundreds of thousands of innocent hardworking individuals, business and financial leaders in our country.

As the broadcaster nervously and ominously shared the play by play, at the cue of her cameraman, she turned around to witness the unimaginable right alongside millions who were tuning in. We were witnessing one of the biggest news stories of our generation unfolding live right before our eyes. A second plane came into view of the television screen and before we could even think about what it might be doing, it crashed into the second twin tower, and that’s when we knew this was no accident, no natural disaster. We were being attacked.

It is very few and far between when something so major in our world’s history is caught without warning on live television. This was one of those. When you are alive to witness it and old enough to remember and understand, you know you’ll never forget it. There is no poise. Cameras are dropped. You see the cockeyed angle of the camera catching people’s feet running diagonally across the screen as dust and debris start to cloud the lens.

Right then and there, our world was changed. Terrorism was a real threat and worldwide policies would need to change. The economy was disrupted, along with our personal sense of safety. But in the coming days, I would come to realize that along with the world changing, my personal world had changed as well. I knew that I could no longer see the world naively: it was broken. What’s more, I was broken right alongside it. I couldn’t hide in it any longer. I needed God, but I knew I had been running from Him. I had turned to many other things for satisfaction in life: the thrill of rebellion in many forms, the acceptance of peers, the rewards of accomplishment. Now I realized those things couldn’t carry me when life was uncertain. The news was scary. Adults who had many years of wisdom on me were anxious. I had pushed myself away from God and there was never a better time to figure out what a relationship with Him would truly look like.

The truth is, God was pursuing me far greater than I was pursuing Him. And I bet, Class of 2020, if you look hard enough, you’ll find the same is true of you. I don’t have the time or space here to mention all the ways God was calling me back to himself, but it was in both subtle and obvious ways. For example, a book he placed in my path (what I thought was a romance novel the local library had on display was really a book about how to have a Godly dating relationship…oh, how I needed that!) The Holy Spirit began working in me and convicting me of unhealthy relationships in which I had surrounded myself. Simultaneously, He began shining His light on the relationships that would help bring me back to Him, pointing the way. He began opening my mind to the flawed way of thinking about myself and where to find my worth. And when I finally took that first step out in obedience toward Him, He filled my soul with an unexpected peace like none I had ever experienced in any of my previous ways of seeking it.

I can’t imagine my life without that intervention. Where would I be? What would I be doing with my life? Who would be my closest comrades? None of these answers would have been the same had God not grabbed me out of my old way of life, and with my reluctant but willing “yes” and my tiniest mustard seed of faith, stepped into the new.

With the uncertainty of 9/11 came God’s loving awakening to all that was out of order in my life. When our world is shaken, God often uses it to shake our own personal world up for good. How might he be doing that in your life? How might He be calling you to walk deeper with Him into the unknowns of your world?

Although many things in your very near future have been canceled, your life is not. The Bible tells us, “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” (Isaiah 43:19)

God wants to put a big X across the word CANCELED and replace it with NEW THING. He is doing a new thing. You are on a new path. It’s not what you had in mind. But what will you do with it? Trust God has the bigger picture. For those who are in Christ, know that nothing is wasted, not even the suffering and disappointment you are currently experiencing. He took the biggest suffering of His own life to make a way in the wilderness for YOU. He knows a “better” day ahead that’s out there waiting for you.

If you are a member of the Class of 2020, how does this sit with you? More importantly, how has God been speaking to you? Leave a comment below. If you’re not a current senior, write an encouragement for your favorite senior(s) below!

It is not lost on me that the school calendar year in which I was a senior was also the year you were born: this is our special connection. Less than a month after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, I was visiting the hospital to help welcome my dear cousin, Cora into this world. Now she’s graduating high school with the unique Class of 2020. Though your loved ones were very much aware of the aftermath in which their lives were having to adjust, you all entered this world participating in a new normal you couldn’t have known was any different. You enter the real world in much the same way: with a new normal. Only this time, you can sense the changing tide as one that will mark your generation, though not necessarily define it—only you, with God at your side, can do that.

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POSTED BY

Jenna

Jenna Kruse is a teacher but not in a classroom. She loves to think outside the box and inside the Word and is daily in need of an attitude adjustment. She is a wife to Justin, a mother to three children ages 10, 8 and 5 and a mentor to teenagers and young adults. You can learn more about the heart behind her blog HERE.

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