Some posts I revisit and rework from top to bottom. This one I could barely touch. I wrote it on March 22, 2016. It was the day terror struck Brussels, while my family was stationed close enough to feel the ground shift beneath us. We are now home in Georgia, my little ones grown into teenagers, my husband’s uniform hung up for good. Reading it back all these years later it still carries the same ache. So I’ve left its heart almost exactly as it was, and simply added a few words from where I sit today.
What I Wrote That Day
As I sat on my couch typing, I lived only a short distance from the Brussels attack. Two explosions tore through the airport my family had flown into when we first moved overseas. The very same airport I’d passed through not long before, on a trip home to the States. I don’t care how many years I served in the military, or how many my husband has served. That day, I was scared. It was hitting far too close to home. A home where my children lived.
I was sad for what had taken place. We prayed for the lives lost, and for the friends and family left behind to grieve them. I prayed for the recovery of the injured. That kind of senseless violence was, and still is, beyond my understanding.
It was the kind of day that reminds you to hug your loved ones a little tighter, and to make sure the people you love have no doubt how much you love them. I was beyond grateful my family hadn’t been in that airport or that metro station. But we could so easily have been. It could have been us, or any of the friends stationed there alongside us.
I was so grateful, too, for the leadership of my husband’s unit … the steady flow of information, the quick accountability, the sense that even in the fear, someone had us. I was scared and I felt safe at the same time, knowing the people my husband served with were taking real action to keep us informed and protected.
I’ve said it more times than I can count: my husband may have signed his name to serve his country, but we, his family, serve right alongside him. We had made our home in a foreign country, truly made it ours. And so it felt deeply, achingly personal.
That day I prayed for Belgium. For Brussels. For the people charged with leading them through it, for the wisdom and guidance to find those responsible and bring them to justice.
You are in our hearts, our thoughts, and our prayers, Belgium.
From Where I Sit Now
It’s been years since that morning, and the world has handed us so many more days like it … so many other cities, so many other communities pulled into the same circle of grief. I think that’s part of why this post still matters to me. The names and the places change, but the call stays the same: to grieve with those who grieve, to refuse to let fear have the final word, and to keep choosing love and prayer over despair.
In the years since, Brussels planted thirty-two birch trees in the Sonian Forest — one for each life lost — a living memorial meant to be a place of silence and meditation. I find such comfort in that image: not rubble, but something quiet and rooted and growing, returning year after year. It feels like the truest kind of remembrance.
I’m no longer stationed an ocean away. My children are nearly grown, and my own road since then has had its own long stretches of fear and healing. But I still pray for Brussels. I still pray for every place that’s had its ordinary morning shattered. And I still believe, even now, especially now, that hope outlasts horror, and that we are never as alone in the dark as it feels.
If you’re carrying grief today, for Brussels or for anywhere, you’re welcome to carry it here with me.
Today, I pray for Belgium. For Brussels. For all of us.
New here? You can read more about me and my journey from battlefields to boundaries on My Story.
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