“I will never release her from my grasp.”
The urge to push was becoming unbearable at this point.
“Push now!”
As I was battling for the life of my baby, the pressure of that fear and hope combined in the dark. Elias was my rock through every second of that experience.
“One more, Adelaide, I am able to see her.”
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the pressure released from me with the last push.
And then it went silent.
“Elias?” My whispered question broke the silence. “Is she breathing?”
“Come on,” he begged me. “Please breathe for your mother, breathe for me.”
Suddenly, a tiny voice broke the silence of the darkness.
“I sobbed like there was no tomorrow.”
And so they put the baby on my chest. She was impossibly small, but she was alive.
The lights came back on. The elevator continued to drop and open up to Naomi and her frightened team of staff members.
“Get me a gurney!” Naomi yelled out in a frantic tone.
We chose the name Hope.
Hope spent three weeks in the NICU, growing stronger with each passing day. Elias never left her side; he slept in a hard plastic chair beside her incubator and promised her a life of safety.
The day Hope was ready to leave the NICU and go Home with us Elias presented me with a leather-bound book, inside was a hand-drawn blueprint of a house that was designed for us; there were pages devoted to Adelaide’s medical library, pages devoted to Sophie’s greenhouse, and pages devoted to Hope’s room—each page detailing an outline of what he hoped our lives would look like in ten years—not to control me, but to inspire me.
On the last page, Elias wrote the following:
“I have finished running from the light. Please help me create it, Adelaide!”
Elias then knelt on one knee and presented me with a simple braided gold band.
“I want you to marry me, Adelaide. I want to live the terrifying yet beautiful mess of loving you for the rest of my life. Will you do it?”
When I looked down at Hope sleeping against my chest, and then turned to Elias who had delivered her to me when all the light had disappeared, I said, “Yes.”
Three years after that fateful night the house in the original blueprint was built. I remember Sophie struggled to play the piano in the living room. Hope was laughing in the background and there was a golden retriever chasing after a squirrel. As I was making pancakes Elijah came home with freshly roasted coffee beans while kissing flour off my nose.
I could hear the antique music box playing its soft waltz in the corner.
Every broken thing repaired beautifully.
I have learned that true love is not about finding someone who is unbroken, but rather finding someone who is courageous enough to hold your hand through the dark and repair what can be repaired and walk with you into the light.
