Impossible Odds

shoulder the responsibility of instigating the military action that I knew might get Jess killed.
    Those many expressions of love are what propelled our end of this miracle, really. I say this knowing it will cause a certain rolling of the eyes among some. Coming from my nonreligious background, I understand all the arguments behind the eye-rolling.
    It’s just that I was there, that’s all. I saw the real-world effects of forces that cannot themselves be seen. I saw other people’s spiritual sense—not their religion, not their church attendance—keep them afloat and hold them steady. I saw this shared sense binding people together in mutual reinforcement instead of driving them apart with disputes and recriminations, as terrible stress can do.
    Never, throughout this ordeal, did I hear anyone’s description of God. I didn’t hear anyone’s opinion of the validity of the Bible, the Koran, the Vedas. I still have no idea what those people visualize when they pray, or what they would tell me if I asked them why they pray at all.
    And yet even though love itself is invisible, I saw the tracks of it everywhere along this bizarre journey, and they were just as real and clear as tracks along a safari trail. It finds a home in the common truth revealed by their shared actions, and that truth is profoundly simple: God is love.
    Forget all the fine print. Forget the edicts, the authorities, the fear, the guilt. Forget all the shiny robes.
    God is love. My acceptance of that simple but powerful idea is merely one of the jewels Jess has brought into my life. And the concept is part of what our son will hear from us when he grows older and it’s time to tell him this story. If he asks where God was to be found during this ordeal, he will be pointed toward thatinvisible force. He will be able to follow the story and watch this force in action, moving all those people around to help his mom return home, so he could be born to us.
    •  •  •
    Jessica:
    No matter how many doubts I had about this new future of mine, of ours, I felt them all overpowered by my determination to tell this story to my children one day, and to have happy and healthy children to tell it to. It was apparent this could only happen if I truly moved on. Enough trauma already.
    I had plenty of personal fears about my recovery, but they got trumped by a deep yearning, heavy as a falling rock. That yearning blew through obstacles, pulled along by the gravitational force of the ones who matter the most to us. This yearning was so strong I couldn’t let myself buy into the official worries about whether I could handle the return. It just needed to be handled. It had to be handled.
    The professionals around me were careful and kind, fortunately, but the need to get back to my life remained strong. I did my best to cooperate with all the interview and testing procedures in their hostage recovery program to keep things moving along and just kept smiling at everybody. Nothing wrong here, folks.
    The official concern was that after having no control over any part of everyday life for so long, I wouldn’t know how to function in an ordinary manner out there in general society. I could certainly agree with their question about whether I would get myself past all this, but there was never one moment of those ninety-three days when I doubted that I wanted to be back with Erik. For me, with the rescue behind us, the simplest way to get back together was to let it happen. Let us be together.
    It was only in the aftermath that I found myself able to grasp the scope of the operation executed by SEAL Team Six, and the apparent size of their extensive command and support operations on the ground. It forces an uncomfortable question: Am I worth it? Is anyone?
    Well, I can tell you that on top of my many points of gratitude for the way this story played out, I am grateful most of all for the will of the American people as expressed in the policy of the United States, and for any other nation that will assert that yes, we are worth it—all of us. For now, let me just say how wonderful it is to be back in sync with a reality that is precious to me, so warm and intimate that I dare to grow bored from time to time. But even the boredom is good, because it is my own, it is my chosen use of that enchanted moment of a life I was never favored to regain.
    People ask what I intend to do with my renewed life, and I can tell you nothing has softened my conviction that one