Hope: To expect with confidence, to trust that
something desired will happen.
Hope is never something I’ve had in short supply. This is probably one of the things that drew
Mark, my definite polar opposite, into my crazy world. I am also everything that makes his autistic
brain crazy – I’m loud, boisterous, gregarious, meticulously organized, overly
trusting, sunshine & rainbows, talking too much and always confident that
everything is going to be okay, all the time.
Mark is the one who actually sees the wolves in sheep’s clothing, the
storm on the horizon, the voice of reason, the protector and provider for
everyone he allows in his circle. He reluctantly
let me put the boys on gas-powered quads at 2 years old but installed governors
and insisted they wear helmets. He also
ends up being the one who ends up quietly cooking everyone’s steaks in the
background, no matter who owns the BBQ, while I am circling with a tray of
drinks and my latest funny story…
Navigating such a relationship is odd, but hope, that is one connecting
thing…
Our family is no different than most I imagine. Mark & I started out in 2002, broker than
broke, sharing a single bed, no family support, overwhelming debt and a desire
to claw our way out of a bleak cycle of poverty. We both worked several jobs, day and night to
make sure one of us was always home with our special needs son who required a
lot of care. There were no breaks. I would study in the wee hours of the night
and eventually got myself an education and fought for a career. Little by little, we could breathe, we could
spend some evenings together, eat at some restaurants and buy some steak and
wine. Eventually the three days a week
at the children’s hospital turned into weekly, monthly then only annual
visits. As I climbed up the ladder, we
stayed true to our roots, paying down debt, never going on vacation, and most
importantly, making it our mission to spread hope where there was none. Most of the time this was with a single moms
ministry because Mark’s heart breaks for fatherless children… so our house was
always full of kids, our wallets always open and our phone always ringing. It’s at these times when you’re giving back,
feeling really good, that you feel relieved that you aren’t judgemental, you
don’t see these women any different than your own reflection in the
mirror. Shawna, look at how biblical you
are, loving your neighbor as yourself. Hands
and feet of Jesus! As wonderful as my
actions may have been on the outside, inside I secretly had quiet thoughts of
“if only you didn’t spend all your money on…” “If you dealt with your addiction
issues…” “If you focused on working instead of…” “Why on earth would you let
that man…” “You wouldn’t be in this position if only you…” and on and on. I would’ve vehemently denied those thoughts
of course, while I comfortably and obediently placed my 10% in the offering
plate every week, knowing I was passed the days of NEEDING help.
What I didn’t know
then… is that hope, hope can be an unattainable thing…
Despite some huge set-backs, a tragic accident that left
Mark forever debilitated and unable to work, some business transition issues,
some rough roads, the blessings abounded and our hard work and dedication was
paying off! In 2011, 9 years after our
only son, with only a 0.5% chance, we found out that I was 4 months
pregnant! We made it our mission to
really make a concerted effort, a big push to save every penny and get our
newly expanding family, out of the city.
Campground dream, here we come.
In 2013, we bought, well, we heavily financed, an RV park, an hour and a
half out of the city. This would allow
me to still commute to my thriving financial planning practice while we built our
business up. And so we did. It went so well in 2014 & 2015 that I was
able to cut 80% of my practice in the city and focus on our busy little
campground and our growing boys. It
allowed me to open up my volunteer tax & accounting office for low-income folks;
we held off on that vacation so Mark could go out and buy a long-awaited and
much-deserved reward, this new-fangled crazy mid-life crisis toy... a
slingshot? Borrowing a million dollars,
draining an entire savings account to fulfil a dream, makes someone like Mark
very anxious and scared. For someone
like me, it’s an exciting challenge, my daily routine of risk & reward;
it’s not just a career, its lifestyle enjoyment!
I have a contingency plan for my contingency plan so hope, well, that’s
just a guaranteed thing...
2016 rained down hard on almost everyone who lived in
Alberta, Canada. The economy ground to a
halt, the campground business tanked and it was much too late to try and
rebuild my practice in the city. That’s
okay – Shawna had a plan for that! I
reassured the boys with my “Don’t worry, be happy!” mantra and confidently sent
Mark & Izak on their life-changing, victory over nicotine addiction
adventure, while I quietly transferred money out of our savings to cover the
bills. It was then, that a lot of you
came into our lives, opening Mark’s solitary world to one of brotherhood,
camaraderie, love, support and acceptance that he never thought was possible
for someone like him. Financially things
were rough but on a personal, emotional & mental level, life had never been
better for my best friend Marko. The Slingshot Garage and the transformation it
stood for, was born.
Despite the challenges, I was totally confident it would turn around
and hope, well hope was an easy thing…
We welcomed this new year and waited for the recovery… that
didn’t happen. Months ticked by and the
phone did not ring. That’s okay – us
financial planners, we have a plan for that!
We just have to make it until the summer, and camping season will make
it all okay! Seemingly, as a sign from
God, Mark & I, who always wanted a big family but struggled just to have
two boys, were miraculously expecting! All
these years later, the ultimate sign of hope!
Spread the news, spread the joy, spread the love! See Mark – I told you that everything was
going to be okay. Mark discovered that
some of his creative ingenuity could be put to good use to create a much needed
income with custom Slingshot parts. Let’s start planning the Sundre SlingFest
and our first ever family vacation for after the baby is born. Here was the proof, that if you work hard,
are responsible and kind, everything will work out fine.
See hope, hope is a
constantly renewed thing…
Despite his hesitant nature, Mark believed in it all,
trusted in my confidence & reassurances.
Until the baby died. Something
changed in Mark that day. For the first
time, he did not trust in hope dream I was selling. While I had seen Mark cry a few times in the
20 years I’ve known him, when his father and one of our close friends passed
away, I have never seen that level of grief or anguish emanating from his
soul. While I was able to rationalize
the event and find solace with my girlfriends and a bottle of wine, Mark
retreated away in isolated heartbreak. Then
in the middle of the night, more destruction came haunting again. The night of our big fire, Mark stood next to
the blaze, seemingly unaware of the explosions and unconcerned for his own
survival. He did not come away unscathed
however – the trauma of watching everything burn, just further shattered
him. Vehicles could be replaced (there
goes that contingency fund) and houses could be repaired but Mark was slowly
slipping away.
I guess I didn’t know that hope, hope can be a fleeting thing…
I bounced back, as I always do, and went about making the
most of the camping season. Mark started
struggling just to get through every day.
As orders for parts grew thin for Slingshot Garage, he pulled away from
his only community, his only friends, figuring no one needed or wanted him
there either. Ever since we have been at
the campground, Mark has been beaming with pride, constantly building,
repairing, renovating, daily entertaining the children that are drawn to his
imagination and willingness to embark on whatever adventure they want to
create. This year, I watched as the
campground started to fall into disrepair, Mark only able to do the minimum
maintenance to stay afloat. Everyone was
asking where Mark was. When they did see
him the physical tolls of untreated infection, illness, returning addiction and
all-consuming depression, the extreme 40 pound weight loss, were shocking. I was cautiously optimistic at the beginning
of June, when I realized that we were pregnant again. I surprised Mark on Father’s Day, with the
news. He guardedly smiled and seemed
happy but his eyes were vacant and full of fear.
I was trying to sell him on hope but he saw hope as a scary and
untrustworthy thing…
There are no words to describe the emotions provoked by the
gathering of truly connected souls. As
slingshot family pulled into the campground, it shone light into Mark’s
darkness, as his dream that he dared to dream, was coming true. It was a small contingent of folks but their
love, support and acceptance of one another was something I had never witnessed
in any other group of any kind, anywhere.
And believe me when I say, I go to A LOT of get-togethers of all types
and a TON of churches & meetings.
There was this comfort and familiarity as if these strangers had known
each other for a lifetime already. I am very
accustomed to Mark being on the perimeter of any gathering he is forced to
begrudgingly participate in. This was
the first time since I’ve met him, that I saw him included, truly a part of
holy kinship of these slingshot souls. It
was unexpected and breathtaking – these were his people. They were able to reach in where I couldn’t
and lift him up to soaring heights in those few days. The sales generated on his SlingLenzes alone
were enough to cover our shortfall for the rest of the summer and there was
interest from large suppliers to carry his product.
He was providing for our family and was contemplating hope because hope
is a contagious thing…
The higher you are, the harder you fall. Almost as soon as the slingshots pulled out,
the bad news started rolling in. First
it was lumps developing in my throat with whispers of cancer and other scary
jargon. The reality that the camping
season was not going to be enough to make the winter’s mortgage payments, never
mind being profitable, became glaringly obvious. My previous uterine rupture, “advanced age” (don’t
be 39 & 49 & have a baby?), cysts & scarring and a host of other
issues indicated that this baby probably wouldn’t make it either. There was discussion of termination
options. Mark fell faster and even
further into despair than he had ever been before. The slingshot almost never came out of the
garage, and neither did he. The shame
isolated him from our guests, his business, our church, our friends, his
slingshot family, from me and the boys.
I went to all the prenatal appointments and ultrasounds, completely
alone. Each time, I would receive even
more devastating news than the last. Sometimes
I would tell Mark, a lot of times I wouldn’t.
After another one of his sleepless, painfully tortured nights, he told
me that there comes a time when you get knocked down so many times that you
know to just stay down. I was powerless
to help him, to make him feel worthy, to will him to live. Being a planner, I took news of my
life-threatening condition as an opportunity to do some estate planning, make a
fancy color-coded binder of death instructions and refuse to allow any baby
stuff to enter the house. Is what it is,
as they say, no sense getting all uncomfortably emotional about it. I’m not into that on a good day.
And in this way, with all this news, hope, hope became an easily
disregarded thing…
Antibodies. Did you
know that if your uterus splits open during labor, and baby’s blood mixes with
your blood, there’s a chance your body will create an antibody to attack any
same intruder in the future? So your
husband’s baby becomes, well, like a nasty flu virus to be destroyed. Neither did I. Just add it to the storm. In the
midst of all of that, a very odd thing happened one day. In our mailbox, amidst all the ominous bills,
was this bizarre envelope. Mark opened
it in my office, handed me an envelope and a coin, and walked out, tears
welling in his eyes, unable to speak.
Confused but also an incorrigible, avid coin collector, I ran my fingers
over the unique breathtaking piece. I
admired its striking beauty and excitedly fathomed its origin. Was it a former
client? A guest? I opened the envelope and a new ginormous
lump joined the others in my throat. It
was congratulations card… for a BABY.
There was this tsunami of feelings that overwhelmed me as I shoved the
card back into the envelope and under my keyboard as I regained my stoic professional
composure.
One of those feelings was hope and right now hope was a dangerous thing…
Mark later told me that the package had come from someone on
the slingshot forum, who just decided to reach out to us. I must’ve taken that card out of that
envelope hundreds of times by now, reading and rereading it. It was my secret seed of hope that I dared to
keep. Someone out there fearlessly and
unhesitatingly believed and sometimes when I was alone, I would allow myself to
believe too. Having shifted my focus so
heavily to the campground, the slingshot stuff and then finally on the numerous
medical appointments every week, rebuilding my practice, our only remaining
source of income, took a back seat. Mark’s
declining health left us with decisions to make with our contingency plan. Pay for his surgery, or pay the winter’s
mortgage payments. I had his appointment
booked in within minutes of him agreeing to get help. Maybe the improvement in his health,
reduction in his pain, might help him.
One thing is for sure, hope, hope can be a very pricey thing…
A few weeks ago, I sat alone in the specialist’s office
while they started to explain that the situation with the antibodies had
reached a critical level. There was talk
of discontinuing some of my regular prenatal tests, because it no longer mattered. Plans were being made to take the baby early,
very, very, early and how I was going to have to be a long way from my boys for
a long time. If the baby and I survived. I was numb as they rushed me back into
ultrasound for the third time that morning, to check brain activity. Did I want to know gender? No, I just wanted
to go drive fast on the highway. I don’t
know when or how exactly that the slingshot family started reaching out to
Mark. It had to have been something he
couldn’t fight and couldn’t ignore. All
I do know is that he started coming out of the garage sometimes. We watched a movie together, as a family. He didn’t have the courage to go on to the
forum, the strength to do most things but he did come with me last week for the
first time, to an ultrasound. It was the
first time that I had ever experienced a 4D view of one of my babies. For one of the few times in my life, I was
speechless. Tears running down my
cheeks, I reached over, grabbing on to my soul mate’s hand as, I uncontrollably,
fell fully and completely in love with our baby.
Although I fought against feeling hope, hope is a newly reborn thing…
It was only hours later that I was looking at Mark &
Milez’s terrified faces as they were loading me into the back of
ambulance. I reassured them that
everything was fine, to go home and relax– easy to say when you’re not scared
of dying. Not easy for them to accept
when they are so scared of losing both of us.
I was in full labor, contractions 2 mins apart when they injected me
with steroids to give the 28 week baby a better chance of survival. Because of the situation, we hadn’t even
started a nursery yet, or talked about names, I just opened my heart to this a
few hours ago – why now? There were a
few moments that night when I slipped into fear, not for me but for this little
one being forced out way too soon. They
were able to stop labor several times in the last week. The goal is to continue to do that until
February 5th, when baby would have the best chance. Doctors want me in the hospital for those 9
weeks, out of fear I will split open again or baby will be born and we live an
hour and half away from help. Too far to
save either of us. I’ve decided, much to
the horror of most of our friends and family, to do spend some of that time at
home. I know it’s risky but I will go
for help when it’s time, or after Christmas, whichever comes first. Contractions
minutes apart, every day, for hours on end, are excruciating. The only thing that can be done is to stay as
still as possible to try not to aggravate the situation. Harder than that though, is watching everyone
else do the stuff that I should be doing.
I’m a doer, not a watcher and my list of things that need to be
accomplished is LONG. I’m energetic and
always have a million balls in the air.
Okay, I’m a control freak who can’t stand needing help; I can’t handle “needing”
anything period. So imagine my surprise
yesterday when I opened the bank account and realized that we needed a couple
thousand more dollars to make our next mortgage payment. Definitely nothing I want to trouble Mark
with.
I spent last Wednesday allowing hope to grow, when hope can be such a disappointing
thing…
I haven’t been myself this last week. Normally I live and breathe to conversate and
connect with others but it’s been so hard to even talk on the phone. Between the embarrassing, poorly timed contractions,
total exhaustion and lack of good news, what do you say? I like to make people laugh not the opposite
so my phone has been set to silent. Mark
hasn’t been himself either, or rather, he’s suddenly more alive than he has
been in a very long time. His phone has
been beeping and every time it does, it seems to encourage and strengthen him. At 4:45 am, the contractions started again,
with a vengeance. Please God, I just
want to get the tree and some wrapped presents underneath it. I just have to figure out how to get all
these bills paid. Don’t make any of the
boys see me in labor again. Poor Mark
has been anxiously hovering around me, trying to take care of everything and
everyone. The guilt and completely
uselessness I feel is probably harder than the physical pain. Maybe this is a taste of what Mark has been
feeling in his darkness all this time… I
distract myself with my phone, noticing I have a voicemail. It’s from someone I do not know, but that
name is familiar. From the baby card under my keyboard. I delete the message without listening to it
and just call back instead. I talk even
more than I normally do, which is always too much. Being so quiet for a week really left a
backlog of conversation I needed to get out.
He politely interrupts to let me know the rally of slingshot angels has
taken place. He already knows accepting
help is hard but “this thing is too big, it goes too far and too wide to be
reversed, you have to accept it.
Slingshot family from all over the US, Canada, Mexico, wanted to do this”. I’ve become really, really good at hearing
devastatingly bad news lately. In fact,
I don’t think I really react or feel too much anymore- you steel yourself for
these things. I’m not prepared for THIS
kind of unexpected news though, what do you say? In fact, I don’t know what I said- some
blubbering incoherent ravel I’m sure. My
phone vibrated a little while later and there was the gift, lighting up the
screen. My CFP brain quickly did the
math, while my heart exploded and tears ran down my face. There was the balance of the mortgage
payment, Mark’s small slingshot part he’d been waiting for all year and enough
to replace Izak’s decrepit old mattress that has been causing him pain for
months. Mark walked in and I did
something I rarely do, I told him about the missing mortgage payment. Then I handed him my phone, the screen still
open. I spotted tears welling up in his eyes before he made his retreat from
the kitchen, completely overwhelmed. But
those tears were not filled with sorrow, grief and shame. He was not overwhelmed with fear, anxiety
& worry. This ethereal posse of
connected slingshot souls shone light into an ever-consuming darkness, reached
into depths that no one, not even I could reach, and pulled their fallen
brother back on to the road. That road
is uncertain and we know the ride is going to be long, rough and hard to
endure, but when an entire brotherhood keeps filling your tank with love, you
keep driving through the rain.
Your presence in our lives has been life changing and instilled hope
and hope is EVERYthing…
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