By Molly Flinkman
@molly_flinkman

The coughing starts at 3:00 a.m. 

Jake, my husband, wakes with a start. Our middle two kids are prone to bad bouts of croup, so he is out of bed before I even fully register the sound. When I hear him carry our 4-year-old, Sawyer, down the stairs, I am quick to follow. I meet them in the kitchen where Jake holds Sawyer’s face in front of the open freezer door. Normally, our kids get croup in the middle of winter, so we wrap them in blankets, put them in front of an open door, and hold them close while the cold air reduces the swelling in their airways. But this is the middle of July. The freezer is the best first option. 

“It’s not cold enough,” Jake says after a minute. “Where’s the closest ER?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

“Find out.”

Sawyer—face still in the freezer—barks and wheezes as I run upstairs for my cell phone. I type “emergency rooms” into my map app as I run back down. 

“Broadlawns,” I say to Jake who is now inspecting Sawyer’s chest, which retracts with each gasp for breath. 

“Keep him in front of the freezer,” he says before disappearing upstairs to get dressed. 

I put my right hand on Sawyer’s chest and use my left to rub his back. His eyes look at me wide. “It’s okay,” I say. “Just breathe. Just breathe.” And then, I realize he can’t. He sucks in, but I can tell no air is making it into his lungs. His gasps are short. His face is panicked. There is absolutely nothing I can do but watch my child labor for air.

He finally catches a breath as Jake rounds the corner, scoops him up, and runs to his car. For a moment, they are illuminated by the garage light, and then they are gone. I will find out later that Jake cuts the 17-minute drive in half. 

The house is silent. I turn off all the lights, kneel on the living room floor, and put my forehead flat on the red leather ottoman. I try to pray, but the only thing I can seem to think is please please please please. Eventually, I move over to the couch where I lie down, stare at the ceiling, and wait.

I get a text message from Jake twenty minutes later: Everything is looking fine. And then a picture comes through: Sawyer sits cross-legged on a hospital bed with a pulse oximeter on his left pointer finger. He is smiling, and I feel the breath come back into my lungs.

This story ends well. The next morning dawns as normally as any other. Life carries on as it always does except now we have an extra dose of Dexamethasone in the medicine cabinet in case the croup comes back. That slow motion, middle-of-the-night hour becomes a story we only sometimes think to tell. There are no residual effects, except this:  I can’t stop thinking about what would have happened to us all if the story would have ended a different way. 

I have a keen ability to fixate on things outside of my control, and this is what my mind does in those days after Sawyer stopped breathing. It spins the story in new ways and gives it new endings. It is irrational—I know this—but the whole situation also reminds me that we are never promised to be spared from pain or difficulty. We are never promised that the story will end so well. Someday there might be a middle-of-the-night phone call that teaches us the meaning of grief or a medical diagnosis that tests the strength of our faith. There may be trials and difficulties and pain I can’t even name, and I am newly resolved: I want to do the work now to get ready for whatever is to come.

But what does that even look like?

At the end of Kelly Corrigan’s book The Middle Place, she recounts a piece of advice her therapist gave her once to help her manage anxiety in these kinds of situations: “When fear triggers your imagination, and your imagination takes over, try to see it through. Keep making the movie, keep writing the scenes, until you see yourself surviving.”

See it through. This becomes my launching point—an opportunity to practice hope any time I feel afraid of something the future might hold. When a worst-case scenario enters my mind, I ask myself what I believe to be true about God and make sure I’m firm in the answers. When the morning news paints grim realities, I consider what I know to be true about suffering. When I think about the many unknowns and uncertainties that swirl around our family, I ensure my hope is set on that which is unswerving and true. I more carefully monitor my intake of information. I work through my questions with people wiser than me. I change the radio station sometimes, and when I realize my six-year-old is singing along to “Jesus, Strong and Kind” in the minivan, I hope all this will eventually be stored up for her too.

This determination to know for certain what I believe is my small act of defiance against the fear of worst-case scenarios—a shout into the darkness that, though we may be hard pressed someday, we will never be destroyed. 

I’ll never fully stop worrying about the what ifs. How could I? The lives of my kids are so intimately entwined with mine. Motherhood has taught me to live with my heart on the outside. But it has also taught me to posture myself toward that which I can be sure—to stand firm in what I know, so I will be better prepared to face whatever comes our way. 

The story of that warm July night ended well. I can’t know how the rest of our stories will be written, but when I keep making the movie and keep writing the scenes, I am reminded that our story is part of a bigger story that promises to end well too.

This is our hope, and the best thing I can do now is to know it.