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BY ERIK ALSGAARD

I used to think I was in control of my life. Prior to 9/11, life was predictable, normal. Get up in the morning, get the kids off to school, take the Metro into the office, do my job, go home, watch sports, call it a night. Normal. Because I was in control.

Or so I thought.

9/11 shook me to the very core about who, if anyone, is actually in control. Nothing about that day was in my realm of control. Other than my choices to stay in my office at the General Board of Church and Society at the United Methodist Building on Capitol Hill and not take the Metro home (I didn't want to die in the Metro along with thousands of other strangers), my sense of control vanished.

I heard the plane hit the Pentagon. I saw people evacuate—"run for their lives" is a better phrase—from the Capitol like ants streaming from an ant hill. "Another plane was headed for the Capitol," I heard some scream. When I heard this, I ran back inside to grab my camera… always the journalist.

I saw armored personal carriers rumble down streets that only hours earlier had carried tour busses.

The events of 9/11 are still very fresh in my mind. It seems like only yesterday—not 10 years ago—that the tragedy unfolded.

I remember answering phone calls from reporters who knew me and were surprised that I was still in the office. I remember, in particular, talking to my friend Cynthia Astle, who was calling from Dallas at the United Methodist Reporter. She wasn't calling for a quote; she wanted to make sure I was safe.

I remember hitching a ride with Jim Winkler and Jaydee Hanson late that afternoon and driving home to Northern Virginia via the Pentagon and seeing the black smoke still pouring out of the wounded building.

I remember trying to call my wife on my cell phone to tell her I was okay. It wouldn't work.  At one point, I got so disgusted with the lack of service that I threw the cell phone against the office wall. I think the dent is still there.

It has taken me years to come to grips with not being in control. The Bible teaches us that God is in control (Genesis 1:1-2:4) in that God created all that is, was, and will be. I'm also a firm believer that God can take "bad things" and use them for good.

At my church in northern Michigan, we just got through studying the book of Genesis for the summer. Included in that study was a look at the life of Joseph (he of the Technicolor dreamcoat). Joseph was dumped in a pit by his brothers. He was sold to a passing band of nomads, who eventually sold him into slavery in Egypt. Joseph, obviously was not in control of his own life.  

But God knew/knows better. God used Joseph not only to save the Egyptians from seven years of famine, but also to save his own family when they, too, were hit with the same hunger. God was in control.

For me, I still struggle with control issues. I still cart along the baggage of that fateful day, as do thousands of others. I'd like to think that one day, normal will return; that I will be control again. But that day will never come. And that's okay, because 9/11, if nothing else, has taught me that "me being in control" is an illusion.

God is. And that's enough.