On 20th Anniversary, 9/11 Widow Jennifer Sands Dives In To Her Journey To Faith

BRICK, NJ — Jim and Jennifer Sands had an idyllic future planned: retire to a Caribbean island and spend their days pursuing their passions for scuba diving and photography.

“Jim was very passionate about diving and underwater photography,” Jennifer Sands said recently. They were advanced-level scuba divers and loved spending time in Grand Cayman, so much so that they had started looking at property to rent with plans to buy a home permanently when they retired.

“We wanted to become divemasters,” she said, to lead others on dives and share the beauty beneath the ocean's surface, giving them a taste of why Jim and Jennifer loved it so much.

“He had joy and he loved to share that joy,” Jennifer said, whether it was diving in the Caribbean, cheering for the New York Giants, taking in a Broadway show or simply spending time on the couple’s 23-foot Bowrider boat on the water at the Jersey Shore. “It was always such a joy for him to share that with his friends and family.”

Jim Sands Jr., 38, was a software engineer and a leading developer of trading system technology for the eSpeed division of Cantor Fitzgerald. He was in his office on the 103rd floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower at 8:46 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001. He was among the nearly 3,000 people who never went home to their families as a result of the terror attacks 20 years ago.

Much has changed in the 20 years since that day. For Jennifer Sands, losing her husband led her down a path she never would have envisioned, but one that she’s as passionate about as she was the scuba diving: helping others, particularly other widows, find peace and hope in the pain of loss through Bible study and a closer relationship with God.

“I have found so much peace in it,” she said.

Finding faith

“I am a completely different person from 20 years ago,” Jennifer Sands said of her journey to faith. While some things haven’t changed — she still lives in Brick Township, where both she and Jim grew up, where they met and where they made their home — other elements of her life have changed dramatically.

Most importantly is the role faith, the Bible and God play in her life now. It is what broke through the grief that was threatening to swallow her whole in the months after Jim was killed.

“I was desperate to find hope,” she said, “desperate to find peace. Desperate to find answers.”

Before Jim was killed, she said, she was not an ultra-spiritual person. Jennifer prayed, but faith didn’t define her life. She said a prayer for Jim’s safety on Sept. 11, like she did every day as he made the commute to New York. It wasn’t the soul-enveloping praying and Bible study that she does now.

Jennifer had never taken a public speaking course, but now she travels the country as a Christian speaker, addressing primarily church groups and women's retreats about surviving the loss of a spouse and how God transformed her life and heartache into a new purpose.

One of her messages: “If you’re having trouble you don’t need more faith, you need a more accurate understanding of God’s faithfulness.”

“There’s a lot of people who believe in God but don’t know him,” Jennifer said. “Trust is built on a relationship, and it’s the same way with God. Spending time with him on a regular basis and spending time in prayer builds that relationship.”

“On the basis of what I do know about God I can trust him with the things that I don’t know. The key is to know him,” she said.

In addition to being a public speaker, Jennifer is a Bible teacher. “I teach people how to read the Bible and where to start. We all have to start somewhere. It’s never too late to start.”

“Before 9/11 I would have looked at someone like me with ridicule,” Jennifer said, “ ‘ugh, born-again Jesus freak.’ ”

But she doesn’t try to force her message on those unwilling to listen; she shares it with those who are open to what she has to share.

“ It’s a joy for me to introduce people to the Bible and grow in their knowledge of it,” Jennifer said.

Progressing to peace and hope

Jennifer Sands worked as a pharmacist for 30 years at Briar Mill Pharmacy in Brick, and as a result, her longtime customers were like another family. After Jim’s death, many of them reached out to her, as did so many others in the community, with donations, with meals, with anything they could to try to ease the pain of her loss. It was a pain that didn’t relent.

“I was bitter at God,” Jennifer said. “He allowed it to happen. Progressing to peace and hope took more than a year.”

“In that first year you couldn’t hear or do anything without hearing about the attacks,” she said. “I could not escape it.”

Jennifer said the comfort and compassion she received from so many were tangible evidence that God was taking care of her.

There were two big moments, however, that pushed her life along the path to focusing on God.

The first was at Christmastime 2001. Jennifer said she mustered the strength to go Christmas shopping. She passed a Salvation Army bell ringer outside one of the stores.

“So I stuck some money in the kettle and he gave me a card,” Jennifer said. She slipped the card in her pocket and went inside — and quickly found herself overwhelmed with grief.

“I’m seeing all these happy women shopping for Christmas presents for their husbands,” she said. “I had a full meltdown.”

She went to her car and broke down crying, and when she reached in her pocket for a tissue, she pulled out the card the bell ringer had given her. On it was a Bible verse, Jeremiah chapter 29, verse 11: “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.”

“I felt like God had broken through,” she said. Jennifer said she began reading the Bible extensively, searching for more. “To this day I call it my life verse.”

Seven months later she was in Grand Cayman, where a bronze underwater memorial plaque was being dedicated to Jim. While she was on the memorial dive, she had an experience that she describes simply as “seeing Jesus.” That fueled her desire to immerse herself in Bible studies and her understanding of God, she said.

“I realized I could live the rest of my life without Jim but I couldn’t live without Jesus,” she said.

From healing the body to healing the soul

It was Jim — specifically Jim’s underwater photography — that led Jennifer to the ministry work she does today.

She had wanted to find a way to honor him, so a few months after Sept. 11, she sent some of his photos from their diving trips to “Scuba Diving” magazine, which published them in March 2002. (See them here, published online by the magazine in 2006.)

A few months later the magazine editor contacted her and asked her if she would be willing to write a book about her experiences in the first year after Jim’s death. The book, “A Tempered Faith,” was published on the second anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

“I was overwhelmed with the response,” Jennifer said. People reached out to her from all over the country to talk about their heartaches and loss, asking for her help in working through their pain. Churches began contacting her, asking her to speak.

“It exploded after that,” she said. She has now written four books about her loss and how her faith has carried her through it.

“Writing became one of my greatest forms of therapy,” Jennifer said. “It was cathartic at times and painful at times.”

It’s something she encourages people to do as a way of working through painful situations, even and especially writing for themselves.

“You don’t have to be a good writer, because you’re only writing for you,” she said. “You can see the growth, you can see how God answered your prayers.”

“I still journal every single day,” Jennifer said.

Marking the anniversary

Every 9/11 family has a different way they cope with the anniversary of the attacks. Some go yearly to the memorial in New York. Some choose quiet, private reflections away from the noise and media coverage of the day. For Jennifer, it’s been a mix.

She didn’t go to the public memorial services for years.

“I’d rather be home,” she said. “I stay home with my family.”

For the last few Jennifer has taken part in the memorial service that Brick Township holds at Windward Beach Park, where Jim’s name is embossed on the base of the Angel in Anguish monument, along with the names of seven other Brick residents. She’s planning to go to Windward on Saturday evening for the 20th anniversary. Read more: Brick Set To Mark 20th Anniversary Of 9/11 Terror Attacks

She appreciates the support from the community that’s demonstrated every year at the memorial, she said.

That is what she wants to be for others now, as they work through pain from whatever cause.

“I think our trials equip us to help others,” Jennifer said. “We help hold each other up. God does not comfort us just to make us comfortable but also to make us comforters.”

She said comforting others and kindness are among the many lessons to be learned from Sept. 11.

One of the most important? “How quickly life can be gone,” Jennifer said. “Let’s treat each other like today is their last day on earth.”

“COVID has taken many innocent lives,” she said. “We are very divided. Peace can only be found when we turn away from our destructive selves and turn to God.”

“We really need to take our focus off ourselves. Let’s take care of each other again,” Jennifer said.

It doesn’t have to be grand gestures.

“God can use all of us in seemingly small and insignificant ways,” Jennifer said. “We go through and don’t realize the positive impact we can have on people.”

That’s what made Jim special, the impact he had on everyone around them.

“He loved his family,” Jennifer said. “He loved spending time with both his family and mine. He had a smile on his face all the time, and he never let things bother him.”

Jennifer said before his death, she worried about everything. “He always said he was married to a panic button,” she said with a laugh.

Their 25th anniversary was in May. She hasn't been scuba diving in years. She also has not remarried.

“It’s not a desire of my heart,” Jennifer said of remarrying. “I can’t imagine diving with anyone else. We had a whole language underwater.”

Because of her faith, she knows she is not alone, not only because of her faith in God.

“(Jim) had joy and he loved to share that joy. I feel his presence many times.”

Jennifer will be speaking about her journey at the Berkeley Township branch of the Ocean County Library at 2 p.m. Sept. 22. More information can be found here.

Information on her books and speaking engagements is available on her website.

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