Safe Harbor

ABSOROKEE, Montana -- We arrived at Scott and Debbie's home none the worse for wear. Just as Darrell said, the brakes returned to their previous RV-stopping vigor and we made it across the remaining mountain pass without barely a single white knuckle.

It is after even a few full days of travel since leaving Washington, very good to be here. Again, I find myself drifting back the boat metaphor -- this feels like a safe harbor.

Scott and Deb have built a home and a life in Montana that is very simply our kind of place and with our kind of purpose. Scott was first an armor and infantry officer in the Army and then chaplain and therapist. He retired from the Army a few years after we met him in Germany, but he has far from retreated from a full life of work and service and, in fact, now continues as part-time pastor at the local church and as full-time therapist, aside from the enormous workload of being a rancher with more than a dozen horses, several head of cattle and innumerable cats and dogs.

Although they've lived in their house for less than a year now, and indeed some details are still under construction, it already has a lived in quality and warmth that takes many people years, if ever, to achieve. Decades of practice moving at the beck and call of the Army no doubt has helped perfect their art of nesting, but there is unmistakable heart to their home and their life here now that resonates deeply, more permanently. Roots are digging in. This is a place to watch, love and nurture friends, family, grandkids and great-grandkids for years to come.

As it turns out that dream was, at least in part, in jeopardy through this past week. Abigail, their four-month old granddaughter, child of their daughter and son-in-law who live in an adjacent house, had become life-threateningly sick. They didn't know if it was cancer or some other unthinkable ailment, but something was undeniably wrong with Abigail's head. A worried trip to the local hospital led to a rushed visit to specialists in Billings which led to an even more frantic race to the children's hospital in Denver. Within hours, the child was undergoing brain surgery.

This was all going on as we were making our way from Washington to their home.

Amazingly, Scott and Deb decided not to tell us any of this until after we arrived. "We knew you wouldn't come if you knew this was going on, and we wanted you to come," Scott told us. Even as we were arriving they were just getting the good news. Abigail would be fine. The problem was not cancer nor any of the other nightmare scenarios. Instead, it was a birthmark of the rarest kinds, that grows on the inside of the skull instead of on the face. Untreated it would very quickly have killed her. Although there was some slight damage to the rear of her brain, the extent of which remains to be seen, all thing considered her prognosis couldn't be better.

It was a remarkable way to begin our visit, with the joy not only of reunion but with the kind of relief that can only be known by prayerful parents and grandparents on the far side of a life and death struggle.

I admire their strength and insistence on giving even amidst all their angst. We have been here only 24 hours, but already this place feels like home to me, their ease and hospitality is that generous.