Searching for Hope in a New Place
EMILY
“So, Nick told me he’s moving to Florida,” Chris said.
I had just picked him up from another therapy session. I still didn’t have it in me to go to the sessions anymore. My mind wasn’t fully awake, since I had dragged myself from the couch, where I’d spent my morning rotating between sleeping and watching bad morning television, to pick Chris up from Barwis Methods. But when I heard him say the word “Florida,” I was suddenly wide-awake.
“Wait, what? What is he doing in Florida? Why did he quit?”
“No, no, no, it’s not like that,” Chris explained. “They’re opening another Barwis Methods in Port St. Lucie. Nick is moving down there to get it started and help run it.”
Instantly, my mind raced. Chris started working out with Nick rather than Rhoades shortly before the graduation walk, and they really clicked. Nick explained things in a way that was helpful to Chris, and he saw progress right away once they joined forces. I didn’t want Chris to have to switch trainers again, but living in Florida sure sounded nice.
“Alright,” I said, glancing at Chris as I gripped the steering wheel. “Let’s go. Let’s move to Florida.”
Chris’s jaw nearly fell into his lap. “Are you serious? You want to move just like that?”
I laughed. “Why not? There’s no reason for us to stay in Michigan, and Nick is your trainer. Don’t you want to keep working with him?”
“Well, yeah, but there are plenty of good trainers in Michigan too.”
“Maybe,” I said, gesturing out the window to the snow already coating the ground, even though it was only November. “But don’t you want to get away from this?”
Chris stared ahead thoughtfully and slowly nodded. “Our lease is just about up,” he said.
“Right? This could be perfect timing! You could keep working with Nick, and we could live in the warmer weather and go to the beach all the time. It would be like living on vacation!” After months of sleepwalking through life, it felt good to have excitement stirring in me. I desperately needed a change, and moving to Florida sounded like the chance I was waiting for. Maybe life isn’t hopeless after all, I thought. Maybe I’ve just had too much of the Midwestern gloom. Maybe everything will look better in the Florida sunshine.
CHRIS
I never thought Emily might want to move to Florida. The idea came to me as soon as Nick told me he was moving, but I didn’t want to uproot Emily again. If a move was going to happen, she needed to be the one driving it. Seeing her excited about something for the first time in forever gave me hope for her and our relationship. The more we talked about it, the more it seemed like fate.
Ever since the graduation walk, we’d lived in a state of limbo. We talked about moving back to Iowa since our families were there, but Iowa didn’t offer the incredible training I was receiving in Michigan. But we had never really thought about making Michigan our permanent home either. We had signed a short lease for that very reason.
By now I realized that training at Barwis Methods wasn’t going to be my ticket to complete physical independence, at least not anytime soon. I moved to Michigan really hoping it would be my magic bullet. I’d never forgotten what Mike Barwis said to me during that first evaluation there more than a year before. “If you were in this program for five or six weeks, you’d be a changed man,” he said. I really believed that, and in many respects, he was right. I grew much stronger and made incredible progress, even beyond my graduation walk. In my mind, though, being a changed man meant walking on my own. Period. I’d be okay with walking with a cane, but I wanted my independence back.
Six months of intense training since the graduation walk had made it clear that full independence wasn’t going to happen no matter where I worked out. But I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel. Nick and I made such a great team, and he drew so much out of me that I knew I needed to keep working with him. I also wanted to be ready for the day I walked with Emily back up the aisle at our wedding, even though we hadn’t talked about the wedding in a while. As our relationship deteriorated, so did my drive to walk on our wedding day. If it took moving to Florida to get our lives back on track, so be it.
“I think it’s an amazing idea,” I said to Emily right there in the car. “Let’s look into it, and if it works out, I’m all in.”
What I didn’t say was that the training was only my secondary reason for moving. Emily clearly needed a change. Nothing I’d tried had helped pull her out of her funk. She still showed no passion for the things that used to set her on fire. She still had zero energy. Most days she only lay around or slept whenever we weren’t fighting. I constantly walked, mostly rolled, on eggshells, trying as hard as I could not to say the wrong thing to set her off. I felt sick as I thought of all those nights when she drove away, screaming that she didn’t want to be alive. If I didn’t do something to help her, I was terrified that she just might get her wish.
By now neither of us talked much about our wedding. I brought it up every once in a while, but the idea of planning a wedding was too overwhelming for Emily. From time to time, my parents asked if we’d set a date or if we’d looked into any venues. Six months had passed since the proposal. I always told them we weren’t going to rush into anything. I wanted Emily to be excited about planning a wedding, and if she wasn’t enthused, I didn’t want to push it. With all the fighting, our relationship wasn’t in the best place anyway.
That evening Emily chatted much more than usual. There was a light in her eyes that I hadn’t seen in months. Instead of slinking back to bed, she typed furiously on her laptop. I could tell she was in research mode, Googling everything. I smiled as I felt my shoulders relax. Emily’s spark seemed to have returned. Maybe, just maybe, this move would be what she needed to snap out of whatever was going on.
“Chris, they have some amazing group homes there!” Emily called from the family room. “They’re set up like a family home, and they have live-in parents actually stay with them. The idea seemed so much better than group homes where staff are constantly coming in and out. That’s such a smart idea! I would love to get involved with that.”
We made a few calls over the next couple of days and decided that since our lease would be up in a month, we had to move quickly. Emily flew to Florida to scope out apartments and found a brand-new complex with a nice pool and workout facility. It even had a little movie theater and pool table in the clubhouse. “It feels like a vacation home, Chris!” she raved on the phone. “It’s not perfectly wheelchair accessible, but they have a ground-floor apartment available, and the doors are pretty wide. I think it’s the best we can do.”
Both of our parents supported the move. I think they were sad we would now be a plane ride away, but they definitely didn’t mind having an excuse to visit Florida in the winter, not to mention having a free place to stay.
Emily almost seemed back to normal as she mapped out the details of our move. She seemed to be regaining the energy she’d lost in recent months. She got me on the Barwis Port St. Lucie training schedule. She hired movers to haul our boxes and furniture down to the new place. Then we spent Christmas in Iowa and headed down to Florida with my family. My parents, my sister, and one of her friends came down and helped us to unload and set up our new place.
As we waved goodbye and their car disappeared into the horizon, I looked at Emily and grinned. “Well, we did it. I think this is going to be a great change for us.”
EMILY
At first living in Florida did feel like a vacation. I was surprised every time I saw palm trees out my window. It didn’t take long to get used to walking outside without a coat in the middle of January. We found it amusing when the locals wore jackets and pants when the temperature was in the sixties.
During that crazy month of planning and preparing for our move, I felt energized, as if the fog had finally lifted and I could be myself again. I carried that momentum into the first few weeks in our new home. I reached out to the group home that had intrigued me and met with the lady who founded it. I toured the facility to see if it was right for me, and I worked with the founder and the trainers at Barwis Methods to get the kids from the group home to work out at their facility. Chris was visibly relieved to see me getting out and pursuing my dreams again. I was too. Maybe whatever was wrong with me had disappeared.
Then my Grandma Max’s health deteriorated.
My mom called and told me that my grandmother was in the hospital. My grandma and I had a special relationship and remained very close even after I moved away. She was the strongest person I knew. Her faith in God was incredible, even though she’d lived through the kinds of trials that cause a lot of people to give up on God. My grandmother meant the world to me. I always wrote her long letters every birthday or Christmas or Mother’s Day, telling her how much I loved her and how special she was to me. Now she was sick and in the hospital, and I was more than a thousand miles away.
In February I flew with Chris to Iowa for a speaking engagement—he was getting more and more of them lately. Grandma Max, who lived in Wisconsin, was two hours away from my parents, who still lived in Iowa. Grandma ended up coming home from the hospital on our first day back. We all hoped she’d turned a corner. But the very next day, her condition plunged downhill. My aunt told us that my grandmother struggled to get in and out of bed and couldn’t even stand up to get herself into her wheelchair.
I looked at Chris with fear in my eyes. “I need to be with her,” I told him. Instead of going with him to his speech, I drove up to Wisconsin with my mom to take care of Grandma Max. We made her fruit smoothies and chicken noodle soup, trying to coax her into eating and drinking when she didn’t feel like it. We begged my grandma to return to the hospital, but she was adamant that she wanted to stay home.
When she was ready for bed, I jumped into action. “Grandma, I’ll transfer you from your wheelchair into bed,” I told her confidently. “I do it with Chris all the time.”
She looked at me skeptically and sized up my five-feet-four frame. Just the day before, she had fallen when one of my cousins and a few larger guys tried moving her out of her chair. “Honey, I don’t think that’s going to work.”
“Come on, I can do this.” I felt as if I was at one of Chris’s training sessions. “I can get you up. Just trust me. All you’ve got to do is sit up a little bit, and I’ll do the rest.”
She was still nervous—I heard her gasp a few times during the transfer process. But we did it. I was even able to help her adjust her position in bed to help her sleep better than she had in days.
We didn’t know it at the time, but that would be the last night she would ever spend in her home. When I transferred her to bed, she asked me to stay with her, which gave me one last, special night snuggling up next to my grandma. She cried out in her sleep multiple times about seeing heaven, worrying me that she was going to die right then and there.
“Grandma, can I help you with anything?” I asked her at one point.
She sighed. “All I need is you, Emily.” I still replay that moment in my head sometimes.
She made it through the night, but the next day she woke up struggling to breathe. Her oxygen levels were so low that my aunt, who’s a volunteer EMT, found an oxygen tank for her at the place where she volunteered. My mom and I realized that Grandma’s time was running out.
My family and I talked my grandmother into going to the hospital. We called for an ambulance, and three EMTs and a police officer arrived, all trying to help her onto a stretcher. I couldn’t believe it when I saw them nearly drop her as they struggled to hoist her up. My grandma was terrified.
“Stop!” I finally said, taking control. “Let me do this.” I marched in, looked my grandmother in the eyes, and said, “It’s okay, Grandma. Trust me. I can do this.” I then stood her up and transferred her onto the stretcher by myself.
At the hospital, though, all the doctors could do was make her comfortable. She’d had a heart attack, and one by one her organs were shutting down. When the doctors gave us some privacy, I lay in her hospital bed next to her, my face on her chest, hugging her with all my might. I had stayed so strong up until that point. I took care of her. I transferred her. I kept her spirits up. I was upbeat for my mom, aunts, and uncles, who were devastated at the thought of losing their mom. After all that, I couldn’t take it anymore. I crept into the bathroom, shut the door, and sat on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. I knew everyone in the hospital room could hear me, but I was too upset to care. My grandma was mostly unconscious during the last days in the hospital. She woke up a few times. She was able to tell us she loved us, and it was nice because she still had her sense of humor. The priest came in to give her a blessing, and we asked her how it was. She said, “It was better than nothing.” We all cracked up! Now she had been unconscious for a while, and I kept praying that she would wake up just one more time.
I still had a burning question I had to ask my grandmother before it was too late. I kept thinking about Whittley. She was still really struggling, and I felt so out of control since I was in Florida and she was in Iowa. I knew that if my grandma was Whittley’s guardian angel, I would feel more peace. And I knew my grandma would be the best guardian angel, since she was so strong. I was so thankful when she woke up, and I asked her, “Grandma, will you please watch over Whittley?” She looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Of course I will, Emily.” Those were the last words we shared, and she fell back asleep.
Grandma Max passed away in that hospital room. I was with her the whole time, never leaving even to shower. I was going to be there for my grandmother no matter what. I got the chance to speak at her funeral and share how special she was to me. When I stepped down from the podium and took my seat, I could feel myself closing down again. I cried a little, but not as much as I normally would, considering how close I was to my grandma. I didn’t want to feel the pain and sadness. I wanted to be numb again. The wall I thought was gone had suddenly returned, just like that.
As the fog set in again, I chose to feel anger instead of grief. I even got angry at my Grandma Max for dying. You could still be here if you were healthier! I thought. Now you won’t be here for my wedding. How can I get married when you won’t be here to see it?
CHRIS
Emily’s grandmother’s death sent Emily spiraling down into a new low. Just a few months earlier, Emily had almost seemed back to normal, laughing and smiling and pursuing a career that would ignite her passion. Within a few weeks, though, cracks began to form. An angry response here, a sluggish day there. When her grandmother died, Emily crumbled. I knew how much Emily and her grandmother adored each other. They were so much alike—deep, thoughtful people who love with their whole heart. The two of them had a strong connection. I knew Emily would be devastated, especially since it was her first experience with losing a loved one.
Even so, it was hard not to be discouraged when the anger and personal attacks returned. I tried to be understanding, knowing I wasn’t the real reason behind her anger, but it wasn’t easy.
Then Emily told me she got a job at the Hibiscus Children’s Center. This wasn’t like the group home where she’d done her traumatic internship but was instead a shelter for kids from the time they’re newborn to twelve years old. I was thrilled for her. For months I thought Emily simply needed to do something where she could use her degree and that ignited her passion. This job checked all the boxes. This could really help turn things around, I thought.
At first the new job seemed to do the trick. Emily came home from work with a spark in her eyes. She told me about two girls, Cali and Sara, five and six years old. When they came into care, they were separated from their two younger sisters. Emily had an immediate connection with them, and I could already see that she cared a lot about these girls. She shared with me that one night Cali was struggling to sleep. No one was able to get her calmed down, but she opened up to Emily about how much she missed her grandmother who had passed away. Emily opened up about her grandma, and they cried together.
Because Emily was working, I hired a caregiver who helped me in the mornings and drove me to therapy. Now Emily was not only doing what she loved but also was relieved of doing everything for me. I was very optimistic that we’d turned a corner.
I shouldn’t have been.
Emily and I still went around and around over whether I gave her the love that she needed or whether she respected me. It didn’t even help when her sister, Marisa, moved to the same apartment complex as we did, as did my friend A.P. I thought for sure that having family and friends around would help pull Emily out of whatever she was going through. We didn’t fight nearly as much because she just buried everything down deeper and hid how she was feeling. Things only got worse when her new job had her working crazy hours. She started working double shifts and sometimes only slept a couple of hours a night.
Then anxiety set in. She became paranoid about everything I did, like if I texted her that my plane was about to take off. If I didn’t take off within seconds, she’d text back, “Well why couldn’t you talk to me right now? Clearly you haven’t taken off yet.”
“The plane is ready for takeoff, but we’re not yet in the air,” I’d say. In the three minutes before I turned off my phone, a major fight would ensue.
“Oh, you don’t want to talk to me? You obviously don’t care about me.” she’d say.
I was baffled. Now she scrutinized everything I said or did. Everything always came back to whether I really loved her and cared about her. Her doubts about how I felt left me beating myself up and feeling guilty that I wasn’t better at expressing my love for her. I knew I needed to do a better job. If I could show her that I loved her and how much I appreciated her, perhaps at least half of our fights could be avoided.
But her blowups only became more unpredictable. One day I went grocery shopping with one of my friends in an attempt to take something off Emily’s plate. When I came back, she went through the grocery list and carefully compared it to the items I’d brought home.
“Wait a minute,” she said, holding up what looked to me like bananas. “These are plantains. Why the heck would you buy plantains?”
I took a closer look at them. Now that she mentioned it, they did look a little different from the bananas I was used to eating. But since I had zero experience with grocery shopping, I had no idea that there were different types of fruit that looked like bananas. In my head, a banana was a banana, so I grabbed the first bunch I saw.
I laughed as I tried to explain. Emily was not amused. “I asked you to get bananas, Chris,” she snapped. “That’s pretty much the most basic thing on the planet. How can you possibly get that wrong!?”
“Wait, are you really upset?” I thought she would see the humor in the situation too. Apparently, I was wrong. “We can pick up something else. It’s not a big deal.”
“It is a big deal, because you don’t listen to anything I say. You don’t care about me. You don’t care about what I want. Why even go grocery shopping if you’re going to buy the wrong stuff just so you can get out of there as fast as humanly possible?” She looked at me disgustedly and shook her head. “You can’t do anything right.”
Is this really happening? I thought. Why are we fighting about bananas?
All along, I kept thinking that if we just tried one more thing, just crossed off one more box, then things would get better. But the boxes were running out. We moved to a new place. Emily got a job. She wasn’t responsible for all my care anymore. And yet nothing was better. If anything, it had gotten worse. I wondered if all relationships went through times like this. I had little to no experience to draw from. I tried reading blogs and listening to podcasts, looking for a nugget of inspiration.
Slowly, though, I began to lose hope. And that’s not a normal posture for me. I’m the guy who was determined to beat those three percent odds, the guy who worked out five-plus hours a day just to walk when everyone said I couldn’t. I knew to focus on the positive, to concentrate on what I could do instead of what I couldn’t. But now I’d done everything I knew to do. I didn’t know how to stay positive when nothing helped. I felt completely unable to control the situation, and it was infuriating. I didn’t understand how our relationship falling apart or Emily’s depression was part of God’s plan. Honestly, this time in my life was even lower than when I went through my spinal cord injury.
There was, however, another line of help we’d forgotten about. Emily and I were far from God at this point in our lives. We had never gotten involved in a church community since we had moved to Michigan together; we didn’t pray together or seek God’s help with much of anything. Our faith had been so important to both of us when we first started dating, but now it had faded into the background. Deep down I knew that was the opposite of what we should be doing. I was trying to keep from doing anything that would add to Emily’s plate, and going to church seemed as if it would be one more task and responsibility that would overwhelm her. I was looking for a quick fix. I didn’t think mere service attendance would be enough to address our issues and problems.
It turned out we needed God even more than I thought, because our lives were about to take yet another wild turn.