Where There's Hope

by Elizabeth A. Smart

  I like that analogy too.

  “It’s really a healing gift that we give ourselves,” says Dr. Paul. “It has nothing to do with the other person. I had a client who was thirty-two, I think, when she came to see me. Single. Had an eight-year-old daughter. She was about 150 pounds overweight and depressed. We got to the part about forgiveness, and she almost fired me when I brought up that concept. Her stepfather had sexually molested her from the time she was eight years old until she was sixteen. Constant sexual abuse over that period of eight years, and he never even acknowledged that it was wrong. He never apologized. Forgiveness—can you see why she didn’t want to go there? Now, to put context around this, her stepfather had died ten years earlier. Elizabeth, what if she forgives him? What difference is it going to make to his life?”

  “None. None at all.”

  “Exactly. And what’s it doing to her to hang on to it?”

  “It’s killing her,” I answer, with sadness for the reality of that.

  “And not only her. She’s got an eight-year-old daughter. Who else is it hurting?”

  “Probably everyone close to her.”

  “Everyone who loves her or has any kind of connection to her,” Dr. Paul agrees. “But it’s not making a hill of beans of difference to her stepfather.”

  “Just so I’m clear, Dr. Paul, you would definitely say—and I feel like, myself included in this—many of us grow up with this idea that forgiveness somehow goes both ways, but really, it’s a one-way street.”

  “It’s a choice,” says Dr. Paul. “And it can happen today.”

  I think that choice presents itself to us in the form of three critical questions:

  Am I ready to accept the past?

  What is the day—the hour, the now—when I fulfill that promise to myself and let it go?

  And how will I integrate what’s happened into who I choose to become in the future?

  10

  Something Worth Striving For

  Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.

  —LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

  I attended the Suzuki harp camp every summer when I was growing up. Sometimes it was down in Provo on one of the university campuses, and sometimes it was up at the Park City junior high school. There were group classes, master classes, private lessons, and lots of personal practice time. It was something I always looked forward to. My mom would come with me and spend the whole day with me in my classes and then practicing. That was a rare treat. When my sister, Mary Katherine, got older, she would attend the camp with me, and my mom would split her time between my classes and my sister’s.

  At the end of the week, everyone who attended would play in a concert together for all the parents and friends who wanted to come. It was during one of those summer camps that I first heard my mom talk about the Aspen Music Festival and School, nestled high in the Colorado mountains. After I heard her talk about it, I knew that I wanted to go. It was a long time before that actually happened. It was five years after I was rescued, and I had just finished my freshman year at Brigham Young University. I had never practiced so hard, long, or diligently in my life. Four hours a day of solid practicing had really made a difference in my playing.

  During the year, I had decided that I wanted to apply to Aspen. Miracles of miracles, I was accepted, and I even got a partial scholarship. I was so excited. I couldn’t wait to attend. Another student in the harp department—my friend Jenna, who had also just completed her freshman year—had also been accepted. (As the harp department consisted of only eight harpists, I knew them all and fortunately was friends with them all.) Jenna and I arranged to live together in the dorms close to the Aspen campus. Jenna was not only a talented harpist, she was also beautiful and had fashionable clothing. She’s the kind of person who seems so perfect you want to dislike her, but you can’t because she is so kind.

  The day before my dad drove my harp and me out to Aspen, I was desperately begging my mom to let me take her mountain bike with me to use. Unfortunately, I think my youngest brother, William, had the inside track with her on her bike. He had learned early how to ride a two-wheeler without training wheels and had basically claimed my mom’s bike as his own. I hadn’t had a bike since I’d grown out of my last one years earlier. Despite my begging and pleading, my mom would not cave. She said that her friend had a “lady’s cruiser” that she would let me take. I was nonplussed by the idea. I was going to the high mountains for the summer, not to the beach. I needed a mountain bike. Mom won, of course. She and Dad picked up the “lady’s cruiser” from her friend and brought it home.

  All my worst fears were confirmed. The bike was a rust bucket, the black foamy stuff on the handlebars disintegrated every time you touched it, and the brakes didn’t work. I wasn’t even sure if the seat was sitable; it looked like it had to be at least fifty years old and had probably spent that amount of time in the gutter. Dad started tinkering away on it, trying to get it in riding shape. At this point, some of you might be wondering, “Why didn’t she just go out and buy a new bike?” That is an easy question to answer: I was broke. My parents always believed in the importance of teaching my siblings and me how to work. The school semester had ended shortly before Aspen was due to start, and I had spent every second I could working as a teller at Wells Fargo to make sure I had enough to pay for Aspen and to make it through the summer. I didn’t know what I was going to do about school in the fall, but I figured I’d cross that bridge when I came to it. I didn’t have the money to pay for Aspen and a new bike, so I had to settle for the rust bucket.

  We drove all the next day and finally arrived in Aspen. As we were unloading the car, I realized that we didn’t have a bike lock—not that anyone would steal my rust bucket, but someone might think it was abandoned or junk, and then I would be without any type of bike. I told my dad before he left, and he said, “Not to worry. I have something in the car that might work.”

  Next thing I knew, he was walking back with a twelve-foot snowmobile cable and lock. I almost wanted to cry. The crappiest bike by far among the student population now had the most protection. The cable had to be wrapped around the bars of the bike and wrapped so many times that it almost appeared to be more cable than bike. This seemed like overkill for a bike no one would steal unless they wanted to shove it down a gulley to see what would happen. As soon as my dad left, I quickly walked inside and tried to pretend that the monstrosity chained up outside my door wasn’t mine. When Jenna arrived a short while later, her parents helped her unload, wheeling out a completely respectable bike—probably one of the nicest bikes among the student population—and locking it up with a normal, nonobtrusive bike lock, next to mine.

  I loved my time in Aspen—the lessons, the concerts. I cried my eyes out when the opera Madama Butterfly was performed. Studying with world-renowned teachers and playing under great conductors was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me. Jenna and I biked everywhere, and I eventually got to where I could reasonably cohabit with my bike. The Maroon Bells, the mountains up the canyon from our dorms, are said to be some of the most photographed mountains in the United States. They are breathtaking. It was about eleven miles, all uphill, from the dorms to the top of the canyon, where we’d be able to really look up at the Maroon Bells. Jenna and I would often ride part of the way up the canyon and then turn around to zoom back down to the dorms. One day, we decided that we would see how far we could get before turning around.

  We started riding, and things were all right at first, but the further we went, the harder it became. My bike had a very limited gear range, and I was in the easiest gear already, almost from the beginning. I kept waiting for Jenna to say she was ready to turn around, but she kept going. I couldn’t even detect the slightest degree of effort on her part. Her feet just kept pedaling as easily as if we were on flat land. My legs were screaming out in agony, and I couldn’t
help but think this was all my mom’s fault. There were some other thoughts that went through my mind that aren’t appropriate to share.

  At one point, I finally overcame my pride for half a second and asked Jenna if she was ready to turn around yet. She smiled and looked back at me and said, “We’ve never come this far before. I’m going to keep going to the top, but don’t feel like you need to keep going if you don’t want to.”

  Well, that was it. I had to keep going.

  I thought, rather uncharitably, I survived nine months of being kidnapped and held hostage. What has she ever survived? If she is going to finish it, I am bloody well going to finish it. I continued to struggle and struggle. If I went too slow, the flies would swarm me; if I went much faster, I really didn’t know if my legs would hold out. When we finally made it to the top, I wasn’t sure if I was going to have diarrhea or throw up. Neither happened, fortunately. I just stood there, sweating and panting, looking up at the Maroon Bells, trying to decide if they were worth it. The ride down was pitifully short. We rode so fast, I feared for my life, which now depended on brakes that weren’t at all what you would call dependable.

  We both made it back to our dorm, and I was a little the worse for wear, but I’m happy to say that I did finish the ride. This certainly was no life-altering moment, no great triumph or tragedy, but I look back and laugh now whenever I think of it. It serves as a reminder to myself that once I have chosen a path, I need to keep going. There will always be good reasons to stop—fatigue, flies, pain—but the end result is worth it. Life is meant to be full of struggle. We are meant to be challenged, and even when we reach the top of one summit, there will always be another.

  I like to feel myself progress. I like to mark my progress, and one of the clearest ways for me to do that is to set goals. More often than not, I bite off more than I can chew, but even if I don’t complete my goal as originally hoped, I am able to see the progress, and to me that’s what is important.

  * * *

  Mike Schlappi’s entire life is an example of setting and achieving goals. It’s also an example of overcoming some of the most daunting obstacles that could possibly stand between a goal and its achievement.

  When Mike was a young teenager, he stopped by his good friend Tory’s house. They’d planned to walk together to football practice. Mike was a star athlete and his father’s pride. While the two boys were at Tory’s house, Tory picked up his father’s off-duty police revolver and emptied the magazine. He thought the gun was completely empty of bullets, but there was still one in the chamber. Tory, standing only three feet away from Mike, pulled the trigger.

  In one hundredth of a second, Mike’s life was permanently changed. The bullet that sped from the gun punctured a lung, clipped his heart, and embedded itself in his spine. Tory panicked and started screaming and crying. Mike lay on the bed, realizing that he had been shot and was in very critical condition. He knew he would die if he didn’t receive medical help immediately. He did his best to calm Tory down and have Tory call his mom. Mike’s mom showed up a few minutes later, as did the emergency crews to take him to the hospital.

  He was told in the hospital that if he was ever going to walk again, the sensation would come back into his legs sooner rather than later. The sensation never returned. Mike has been a paraplegic since that day. But that didn’t stop him from winning three Olympic medals.

  The first time I met Mike, we went to Olive Garden and had a great time chatting. This was early in my quest, but I was getting better at asking the questions that opened doors and got me thinking. Unfortunately, I was still getting used to the technology side of recording and uploading interviews. I was depending on a smartphone app that, I discovered later, tends to be a little glitchy. Somewhere between the phone and the computer, the conversation disappeared. I felt like an idiot when I called Mike and asked him if I could talk to him again because the miracle of technology had failed me. I went out that day and bought a digital recorder. I wasn’t going to take any more chances; I would record the interview on both my phone and on my new recorder. Mike was as polite and accommodating as is possible. He told me it would be a pleasure to go to lunch with me again and chat, and we set a date for the following week.

  The morning arrives, and I’m not sure why this is, but whenever I’m about to get together with somebody, my life always seems to become a bit chaotic. Matthew, in a rush to meet with some of his clients, is unable to watch Chloé while I meet with Mike, so I quickly fill her diaper bag with animal crackers, toys, and her bottle, hoping that’ll be enough to entertain her through lunch and my conversation with Mike at a Thai food place. I arrive a few minutes early—which almost never happens to me since having a child—and Chloé seems content to drop crackers on the floor and stick her little hand in my water glass while we’re waiting.

  Then Mike rolls in, and he has the biggest grin on his face when he sees my little Chloé. After we struggle through the meal with Chloé trying to escape her stroller every two seconds, there’s more chicken and vegetables down her front than in her tummy. Mike suggests we go back to his house, where there are lots of toys, his two little dogs, and his wife for Chloé to play with while we chat. I gratefully accept. I’m continually amazed by and thankful for the way people I’ve asked to interview have welcomed me into their homes and into their lives.

  It’s a hot summer day, and the interior of Mike’s home is nice and cool. His wife begins pulling out all sorts of toys for Chloé, whose attention is immediately caught, until she sees the little dogs. After that, all she wants to do is chase the dogs around and try to pick them up. While they play, Mike invites me into his study, and I ask him, “Was there one person or maybe a few people who influenced your life after you were shot? Someone who encouraged you to keep going?”

  “There’s probably four or five that really stand out,” he says. “I’ll just clump my family into one. Brothers and sisters that cared for me. Mom loved me no matter what, disabled or not. I knew it, felt it. Dad—it was hard for him, but still he kicked me in the butt and made me deal with this and get over it and move on. So my family, definitely. Mike Johnson, another guy in a wheelchair, lost his legs in Vietnam. He came and visited me in the hospital. It impacted me, because I’m like, ‘Hey, you’re married. You drove over here. You’re in a wheelchair, and you’re okay.’ It gave me a role model. I also had some very good friends who made me feel very loved and very normal.”

  “Mike, you’re so … happy. You seem like you’re always headed in a positive direction. Do you ever have bad days?”

  “Well, yeah.” Mike shrugs. “It’s kind of a strange concept, but I like the concept that your attitude is not your mood. Everybody in life, when you’re having a bad day or something’s happened to you—a tragedy—some people are going to say to you, ‘Oh, get over it,’ or ‘Change your attitude,’ or ‘Stay positive.’ That’s not always healthy. You need to process it. You need to go through it. I got shot, and if I had just immediately said, ‘Oh, I’m fine. This didn’t happen. I’m not going to have a bad day. I’ll fake it,’ I wouldn’t be healthy. I had to go through those moments, those days, those weeks. That is your mood. It’s your feelings. You’re depressed. That’s real. That’s good. Your attitude is your position in life. The best way I can describe it is, attitude is a position, like an airplane has an attitude indicator that measures the plane’s position to the horizon. That’s where they’re headed. Just like the plane, you can have a bad mood but still be in the correct position. It really hit me strongly because I used to think, I gotta snap out of it.”

  I’m not sure why I find this comforting, but I do. Of course, I don’t want anyone to have a bad day. It’s just good to know I’m not alone. I ask him, “Do you think it’s possible to be in a negative mood and still be going in a positive direction?”

  “Sure. I can have a bad day and still be heading in the right direction. When something bad happens, you have the right to those feelings, but get positioned
for a positive future. Believe you’ll get through it. Act as if you’re going to get through it. Live as if everything is going to turn out good.”

  That strikes me as such a direct way of living. Such a straightforward trajectory: Believe. Act. Live. “But how do you physically do that?” I wonder out loud.

  “The first thing to get over it,” says Mike, “is just believe you can. Make a decision that you will get over it. I’m in a wheelchair. I remember the first curb that I saw—little six-inch curb you can step right up and walk on—and that looked like a cliff to me, but I thought, I’m going to pop a wheelie, and I’m going to get my front wheels up on top of that curb, and I’m going to get my momentum going, and I’m going to get up on top of that curb. I’m going to get over it and get on with my life. You have to make the decision that you are going to do everything you can to move forward. I’m not going to say you don’t have bad days. You wouldn’t be normal if you never experienced a setback. It is just a conscious decision every day that I can do this.”

  Throughout our whole conversation, Mike has had a smile on his face. Even when he told me about his friend shooting him. And the weird thing about that is that it is not weird at all. The smile isn’t a positive attitude mask; it’s a natural, easygoing smile. Mike isn’t one of those people who are constantly forcing themselves to be so happy that it gets saccharine. He is just naturally happy, organically positive, and very genuine. Nothing comes off as plastic or pretend. He has to adjust his legs and seat every few minutes; it’s clear he lives every day in a lot of pain.