A Letter to Lucy | Living a Purpose Driven Life

What you taught us about letting go, faith and discovering purpose

Two. You would have been two years old tomorrow. Time certainly is fickle. It all seems like yesterday and a lifetime ago in the same instant. We were different people then. We have been challenged to grow, learn, face each day and understand what it means to move forward as best as we can without you here.

Selfishly, I want you here. I long to hold you. I ache to express my love to you. Your Mom feels the same way. We speak of it often. We know it’s not possible to have it the way we want it.

I see pictures of your older brother at two and I can’t help but wonder what things would be like with you here. Life would be different, for sure. You never had much of a normal spirit about your life. You were special from the start.

The impossible to answer questions still creep up and catch us by surprise.

Would your hair be long enough that we could braid it?

What would your smile look like?

Would you have held onto your beautiful auburn hair and deep blue eyes?

Would you be saying any words?

Would your brother make you laugh as hard as he gets us laughing?

We’re forgiving of ourselves when these desires and questions arise. We try not to get lost too much in them. We let the emotions wash over us and carry us back to feeling that connection with you. Waves on a beach. Unpredictable, yet beautiful, waves that still come and go nearly every day.

Yet we know where to direct our focus. We can’t change the past. This is the life we have been given and we continue to aim to live our lives to honor you and your brothers as best as we can.

You taught us that. You taught us so much.

You defied odds. You lived a life of incredible purpose in such a condensed amount of earthly time. You blessed us with your presence. We’ll cherish our time with you and the lessons you imparted until we meet again.

For your birthday letter this year, I wanted to share with you one of the most meaningful lessons you taught us.

You see Lucy, I questioned my purpose daily, if not hourly, when I was battling alcoholism. It became so consuming that I sometimes screamed out loud in agony to no one in particular, “Why am I even here?!?”

No longer is that the case. You gave us that gift and we work daily to live by your lesson. Your Mom and I are far from perfect, but we actively do our best each day to live out this lesson you imparted to us.

I never listened when I was in the depths of my battle with alcoholism. I obsessed over control and doing things my way for nearly a decade and a half. By the grace of God, I was set on the path of recovery days before I learned you would enter our lives so that we could be ready. Ready to listen, to learn, to change, to show up for each other and to meet each other as the best version of ourselves.

I’m going to share a secret with you: I get nervous when I speak in front of people. I’m uncomfortable drawing other people’s attention. But I have developed a tactic for dealing with the nerves. I ask questions to the group I’m speaking with; I aim to start a conversation with the crowd. It helps me feel like the attention can be taken off of me for a moment while my nerves settle.

The most meaningful talks I give are at the rehab facility that took part in saving my life before you were born. It’s the place where your Mom first told me you would be entering our lives. I speak in the same room that I first got to share with my closest friends from rehab that your Mom was pregnant with you. I’ll never forget that moment — the hugs from my closest friends, the slaps on the back and the tears of joy that appeared in the eyes of people that had come into rehab a broken version of themselves. Standing in that room together, we had conversations about what life would be like as a father in recovery. There was so much potential in front of us.

These days, when I go back to speak in that same room, I start out easy and light with the questions — getting people familiar with me and selfishly allowing my own nerves to settle.

But I always end with the same question: “Who has wondered ‘Why am I an addict?’”

I pause and wait while every single hand in the room eventually creeps skyward.

It’s a question that drove me mad. I directed all of my energy towards trying to answer that question and it was like spinning wheels on a vehicle stuck fast in mud. I mashed down as hard as I could on the gas pedal as I agonized trying to figure out the answer to that question.

It only made me sink deeper.

I was desperate and I was falling apart. My inability to answer this seemingly simple question added torture and torment to my life that caused a barrage of more overwhelming questions to begin haunting me.

Why am I struggling?

The questions grew in intensity.

Why is there so much suffering in this world?

Until they led to a nearly catastrophic breaking point for me.

Why does my life matter?

The questions spun in my mind constantly, driving me deeper into despair and nihilism. I couldn’t see the point. I couldn’t find an answer. It drove me to the edge of believing that this life was even worth living.

How could there be purpose and meaning in such a sinister and suffering-filled world… Why am I even here?

And then it happened. Sitting in the intake room at rehab, finally alone, I let go of the obsession to answer that central and agonizing question that had built up into a torrential storm within me. When I simply accepted the fact that I was dealing with alcoholism, I turned my obsessive focus in a new direction — one where I was willing to do anything to grant myself a reprieve from the madness.

Suddenly, understanding the ‘why’ behind it all was something I didn’t care about anymore.

The relief was instant. All of the burdensome ‘why’ questions dropped away and my thoughts transformed and simplified.

This is the way it is; now it’s time to do something about it.

I was still far from understanding what specific actions were required to live in recovery, but the immediate relief from letting go of the obsession to understand ‘why’ is the most significant burden that was ever lifted from my life. From that point forward, I was willing to take action and work towards alleviating this great source of pain and suffering from my life.

This experience that I lived through was recently synthesized by a great father, patriot, and author Dakota Meyer in a body of work titled Why to What. It’s such a clear, beautiful framework for the actions one can take to alleviate the anxiety, nihilism and fear that creeps in when these overwhelming (and many times unanswerable) questions of ‘why’ bear down on us.

Sometimes, the best thing we can do for ourselves is let go of the need to understand completely and simply focus on taking action.

There are times for pondering deep and meaningful questions and then there are times for action. People often excuse themselves from taking action by inflating the value of the former, when it’s really just justification for inaction, generally driven by fear. I am learning to dedicate more time to the latter and have found incredible meaning in doing so.

A shocking discovery I found with recovery is by practicing acceptance and focusing on the actions that are required of me in the moment, things seem to circle back around and I begin to piece together an understanding of the ‘why’. Not because I’m driven by the question, but because I have let go of the need to know.

What I learned in early recovery turned out to be just a work up for the real challenge that lay ahead. Don’t for a moment think that questions of ‘why’ did not flash through your Mom and my minds as we navigated the uncharted journey leading up to your birth and the time we got with you on earth.

Why was there this genetic condition?

Why does she keep fighting when we were warned she would pass before birth?

Why are her lungs not taking over?

Why us?

And I’d be lying if I said this final question never crossed my mind after our time with you on earth was complete:

Why am I not falling back to alcohol during these impossibly difficult times?

We didn’t fight these questions when they naturally arose. Yet, we didn’t give them much attention either. We knew that obsessing over finding the answer to these questions of ‘why’ were going to overwhelm us and lead us away from the action we needed to take.

So, we learned to let go in the moment. We recognized the natural desire to understand more, but then we set those desires aside and focused intensely on the action that we needed to take in front of us. What could we control and what could we do about it right now?

That practice of letting go of the why led to the most awe-inspiring moments of our lives. It led me to a singular moment that cast a light onto the most agonizing why question many of us face in our lives: Why am I here?

Here’s a final secret I want to share with you this year, Lucy.

I feel that being able to show up as best as I could during your life was why I was put here on earth. Witnessing God’s hand as a family throughout your life and finding my faith in the process. Those first moments together with your Mom and me. Introducing you to your brother and other family members. Our afternoon naps holding hands. Being with you through the earthly end.

What I now don’t understand is why I have continued waking up each morning since losing you; but now I have faith there is a reason.

Each morning we wake to a brand new day in front of us.

What now?

This question has weighed indescribably heavy in this season of life. But each day we learned to face it and continued to take action. We don’t know why, but we knew we had to.

Nearly two years later and I haven’t completely figured out what we are supposed to do from here; but we’re setting those worries aside and working to show up and make progress every day.

I have found peace with the idea that any other purpose that I have in life may never be made apparent to me. That’s alright by me. I have faith there’s a reason we’re still here.

Happy Birthday to our sweet girl, our little bunny, our one and only Lucy.