This short story below came about after weeks of sitting and turning over a certain story that Lt. Col. (Ret.) Charles Hartford told me in our conversation a few months back. He spoke of seeing an interview on TV within minutes of returning from the rescue of Private Jessica Lynch. A father spoke with a newscaster of a hopeful reunification with his daughter, who had been a POW with Lynch. Her body lay, deceased, in Charles’s vehicle.
That father still had hope in that moment, despite the unknown realities that were about to bear down on him.
Charles’s story of hope and faith stuck with me. It made me reflect on our own experiences and it allowed me to see the interplay of hope and faith throughout our story and how we, as a family, aim to navigate through the beautiful challenge that is life.
The elevator moved at an agonizingly slow pace this morning. These were my least favorite parts of the day in the NICU, being forced away from our daughter’s room each morning to take care of an administrative task required by the hospital. I reached out and grabbed hold of my wife’s hand as we stood together, counting the seconds until we could be at Lucy’s bedside once again.
My mind drifted back to nearly two weeks before, crowding into that very elevator with a gurney, our bags and the EMS team wondering what was to come for our then-unborn daughter. There was anxious energy building up in that cramped elevator as the team waited to spring into action in the extremely early hours of the morning.
That past feels like another life lived: a memory viewed through a portal that permits me to stand next to a version of myself that didn’t know what life would entail when those doors opened for us. Fear was knocking, but faith was present and refused fear entry.
The lurch of the elevator settling on the bottom floor followed by a tired “ding” closed the portal to the past on me. I knew how that part of the story played out; I did not need to linger. The doors in front of us opened, permitting physical steps forward to fully come back into the present.
There is no muted grayness that seems to exist in this world quite like a cold, wet, clouded-over December morning in Minnesota. That grayness penetrates the walled window into the entryway of the hospital where we head to a woman sitting at a desk. I think of the warmth of Lucy’s room many floors up, and it breaks through some of the gray that shrouds everything in that entryway. Finally working our way to our destination and sole reason for leaving our daughter’s bedside, a woman sitting behind the desk looks up at us and speaks.
“Patient’s name?”
“Lucy,” my wife and I reply in unison.
“And the passcode?”
“Hope.”
With that, a machine starts buzzing as two temporary passes, good for only 24 hours, are printed out. I stand and wonder how many other families stationed here in the Children’s Hospital choose that very same passcode under such dire circumstances. When first presented with the need for a spoken key to permit entry for ourselves and our guests to see Lucy, I knew instantly what we needed to speak.
We weren’t ignorant of the battles and the odds that our little girl faced. We had no idea how long our NICU stay would last. Despite my annoyance at being brought away from my daughter’s bedside for a few minutes each day, I did smile as I placed the ID on my chest with a photo labeled “Parent: Lucy”, a role I accepted with the greatest honor.
The thing about hopes, though, is that they are our own personal desires. We should still maintain them, taking action and directing prayers and visions towards driving us to our hopeful state. But more important than anything is the ability to maintain faith when hope gets dashed.
Grief is nearly always preceded by unrealized hope. When it becomes apparent that our visions and desires in life are not going to manifest, the weight of grief gets set upon us. With that burden, an opportunity becomes presented to us all, though we never ask for it—we can bear it or we can crumble beneath the weight.
I have experienced it myself, and found it in countless others who have borne the weight of incredible hardship. Faith permits persistence through these moments of unrealized hope. Faith that there exists some purpose for the pain and outcome that we live through. Faith that there is something far greater than our own limited intelligence could ever comprehend.
Faith through these moments, large and small, has been the greatest challenge in my life. Yet, I have found nothing that permits people to progress through these experiences consistently outside of faith.
Maybe it’s simply my anecdotal survivor bias that steadfast faith allows people to navigate the treacherous waters of grief and lost hope. Maybe.
But also—is that not the point?
To survive and eventually start to live again, directing your gaze upward, finding new hope, and discovering the joy and beauty that exists in life.
Keep showing up.
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Hope and faith, so beautifully stated. Love you