Today I was called a "lifer".  Today I was given that compliment from a very special friend who knows how I truly feel in my heart.  And yet, even with my emotions tearing apart, I still wish there was more that I could do.  Thousands of people wandering the streets with pictures of their loved ones, trying to locate them.  The victims chances of rescue getting slimmer and slimmer as the days go by.  Almost all hope is gone.  How do you tell their families that part of their circle of life is gone?  Crushed in their innocence by a sick world force who doesn't care?  How do you tell these people that their loved one was taken because they were Americans?  Home of the free and the brave.  Of a country who has always put their hand out to help others in time of need.  Thousands of lives snuffed out by the act of a madman.  For what?  FOR WHAT?

And yet, through all this devastation and horror, Americans stand together as ONE!  The country has joined together as a team of support to pick up our broken pieces and put them back together again.  We have been hurt as never before, yet our spirit is unbroken.  Stronger than any previous era of time, we are bonding together to help our wounded cities.  Countries are coming together to help us fight this foe who has done such a horrendous thing to us.  Not only us, but to the whole free world.  World forces are coming together with us to protect our Americans from any more hurt.  To prevent this from ever happening again.  We are strong.  We are stronger than our enemies know.  They will soon find out our strength, our power, our intelligence, and our alliances.  Woe to the countries who bond together against us as they will fall.

Although I pray for the future of our country and the safety of it's people, I also pray for the lives that are already lost, and will be lost in the future.  This Attack on America comes with it's own Declaration of War.  Many lives will be lost to protect our freedom as in the past.  Americans will go to all lengths to protect that freedom, and now our foreign friends join together to fight off this horrible sick group of people who deem to destroy us.  NO!  We are not to be destroyed.  When we are hurt, we only get stronger.  When we are attacked, we will retaliate.  When our freedom is in danger, we come out of our den like a mother bear to protect it.  How could this group be so stupid as to attempt such an act of terrorism without knowing that we would retaliate for all the carnage they caused?  How could they be so foolish knowing our record of defense?  Why did they waste so many human lives when they know we will come after them for doing so?

Such a waste.

Why can't the world live together in peace?