Chapter 18

Jon and I stared at one another across the breakfast table, searching for answers to questions neither of us knew how to ask. Finn lumbered in, pressing against my leg for a handout, and I fed him a few crispy cheerios that had stuck to the side of my bowl.

“Where’s Hannah?” Jon asked.

“She left with your dad about an hour ago.”

Jon’s dad had taken over my carpool duties two weeks before, and had resorted to bribing Hannah and three middle school boys to behave by buying them ice cream on the way home from school each day. So far, it was working well.

“Did you sleep?” I asked Jon as he was nursing his second cup of coffee. I sensed he was hoping for relief in the form of caffeine.

He shrugged. Something like pain and confusion shadowed his blue eyes. Confusion I understood. There were so many things I questioned, wondering if we should have found another way, waited, or made different choices. The question of what did we do wrong? suspended in the air nearly every time we spoke.

He answered my benign question. “Yep. And you?”

I nodded, concentrating on my cup of tea. I wanted to tell him about my dream, but kept it to myself.

As we sat at the breakfast table, I wanted words. I wanted to spill them from my broken heart and have someone be able to contain them. I wanted someone to tell me everything would be okay, that I would not die from the grief and terror that was eating me alive piece by piece, that I would not drown in the dark waters of my dreams. I wanted our words to tangle together, fix our pain, and solve the problems of our loneliness.

But he couldn’t do that. His own pain had buried the words too deep and he remained silent. I glanced up at Jon and paled. He was looking at me with the grief of the world etched across his face, yet neither of us dared to speak it. My need for words would only burden him more.

I remembered what a friend said to me as we were just beginning this transplant journey with Andrew. “Always look up,” she’d said, pointing her finger to the sky. “Look up to the One who continually offers refuge and hope.”

That morning, I prayed over my bowl of soggy cereal:

Where are you God?

I can’t see you.

Am I all alone?

I finished my cereal, somehow hearing:

I am here.

I will never leave you.

As I walked into the hospital lobby later that morning, I was seriously freaked out by my cereal conversation with God. Had I wanted to hear those words so badly that I had made them up in my mind? Was I going crazy? It was possible. I wondered how many parents ended up in the psych ward after trials like this. I was sure it had happened. So many blows to the psyche over time can leave a person doubting whether or not they have a grip on reality.

Andrew was sleeping again when I slipped into the room. My dad was sitting upright in the chair, asleep too, with his briefcase on his lap, his C-Pap machine on the floor next to his feet.

I bent down to wake him. “How was the night?”

His head bobbed and he rubbed at his eyes. “Just fine. We did just fine.”

My dad slept though all sorts of chaos when I was young, so I wasn’t surprised he didn’t notice any disruptions throughout the night.

After he left, I made myself comfortable and began writing a few emails to friends and family to keep them up to date. Although I generally left out the gory details of our existence and shared only the surface facts, my closest friends knew how to read between the lines: Things were getting bad.

My phone buzzed in my pocket as I was trying to compose a positive thought to complete an email to one of Andrew’s old teachers. I pulled out my phone along with a bunch of wadded up used Kleenex, and a slip of folded paper. I recognized it immediately. It was a few lines of scripture I had written on a grocery receipt: Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go. – Joshua 1:9

I remembered writing the note weeks before. It was intended for Hannah—words of encouragement for the times we were absent. But here it was, in my hand now, reminding me that God was somehow with us. I tucked it back in my pocket as a familiar voice came on the line.

“Hi, Kristin, how is Andrew? Is this a good time to talk?”

It was Carol, a long-time friend whom I hadn’t talked to since we moved into the hospital months before.

“Sure. Andrew is sleeping and I’m just writing some notes. How are you?”

“Well actually, I’m downstairs. Do you think you could get away for a short while to meet me for lunch?”

A lunch date? I was overjoyed at the prospect of seeing my friend as much as escaping the room. I checked in with the nurse, grabbed my purse, and quietly slipped from the room.

“I woke up this morning thinking of you,” she told me as we ate. “Suddenly I felt I should drive down here.”

I was speechless.

“Now tell me, how are you really?”

I felt my carefully put together facade crumble immediately. The walls I had built around me, to protect me from the reality of my life, were broken and I couldn’t contain the raw truth. “Not so good,” I admitted through a stream of tears.

We sat in the far corner of the coffee shop, hidden from others on their daily quest for a caffeine fix. “Just when I think it can’t get any worse, it does. Every night when I go to sleep, I wish I didn’t have to wake up.”

I began to tell my story through snotty sobs, tugging it from the deep, dark places inside of me, places I rarely went, places I avoided for fear I would never be able to return. I told her how one minute I felt so strong, my convictions feeling like peace, then the next moment I felt hope slipping from my grasp.

Carol paused, biting her lip and tucking her auburn hair behind her ears, measuring her words carefully. “Do you know the difference between the words resign, and relinquish?” she asked.

I shook my head. What did that have to do with anything?

“To resign, is to give up, or give into. It leaves you with a feeling of hopelessness. But to relinquish, that is the act of handing over.” She waited, forcing me to look up at her. “Like handing over Andrew, perhaps? It will give you room for acceptance and hope.”

I shivered. It was like she was inside my head. Like somehow she knew about my dream from the night before. I thought about how I had struggled for months to define that difference for myself, running from the feeling of hopelessness, afraid that if I let go of my hold on Andrew, it would be an indication of giving up. And I was not willing to give up. Handing over authority to not only Andrew’s medical team, but most importantly, wholly entrusting him to God, was my only avenue for survival. I couldn’t contain the fear anymore.

While we ate our lunch, Carol listened. And during that time, she was carefully picking up the pieces of my broken heart, handing them back to me with a renewed sense of hope. She offered me room to grieve, to share my fears, and to unravel in a way that I couldn’t do in my upside-down daily life.

When we finished, she handed me a little blue box. “I made this for you,” she said with a smile.

I opened the gift, hardly believing what was inside—a sterling bracelet with lettered beads that read, Light of the World.

After lunch, I called Julie, hoping for a generic conversation about the latest novel she was reading. Julie devours books like a chocolate lover eating a sheet cake in a single sitting. Her life changed the moment Amazon put books online and she cradled a Kindle in her hands for the very first time. Her husband is a jealous lover in a three-way relationship, always competing for her attention.

“Hi,” I said when she answered the phone. Tears were too close to the surface, so I didn’t dare say another word.

“I can tell something’s up. What’s going on?”

I hated it when she could read me so clearly. “I had a conversation with God this morning over my bowl of Cheerios.” It wasn’t the first time God had intercepted my path, but it was the first time I had ever heard the voice of the Divine.

“Well, what did He say?”

I told her about my morning, how I thought I might be losing my mind. Then I told her about my about my lunch with Carol.

I heard a smile in her voice. “Check your email, I’m forwarding something to you right now.”

I opened my laptop, waiting for the ping of an incoming email. When I opened it, there was a giant photo, a selfie, taken from the top of a mountain. A woman’s hand holding a cardboard sign read: ‘Psalm 34: 4-6, in honor of Andrew.’

“Who’s that?” I asked Julie.

“A new friend of ours. When I told her Andrew’s story, she felt helpless. She said she wished she could do something. So this morning, she hiked Camelback Mountain in Scottsdale, in honor of our Andrew. You’re not alone. Please don’t forget that.”

I hung up the phone and searched the Internet for the scripture. I found it and sat back in the rocking chair to read.

“I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me. He freed me from all my fears. Those who look to Him for help will be radiant with joy; no shadow of shame will darken their faces. In my desperation I prayed, and the Lord listened…” - Psalm 34: 4-6

Seek. Look. Cry out. It was clear that this God of the bible, the one I tried so hard to trust, had heard these pleas before. Had He heard my cries? Were they important enough? Was my faith strong enough? I didn’t know. I spent so much time wanting a God with skin on, one I could touch and see and feel and hear. I wanted to be scooped up in His arms and told that everything would be okay, and I was angry that that hadn’t happened. But then I remembered what Becki told me days before, “God will show up in the mess. Watch for it.”

While looking at the picture again and reviewing my day, I saw for the first time that the people in my life were the presence of God I longed for, carrying me when I was too weary to go on, holding my hand as I walked through hell. They showed up when I needed them most, even when I didn’t know I needed them. They were my living, breathing, skin wearing version of the flat-felted God I had given my heart to as a little girl. That night as I went to sleep, I thanked Him for showing up in my life in a very real way. And then I begged for mercy for us all.