Elizabeth Smart’s story reminds us that miracles can happen

I’ve thought of Elizabeth Smart a handful of times in the past nine months. While… I’ve thought of Elizabeth Smart a handful of times in the past nine months. While reading one of those crime novels I’m so fond of or after hearing the newscaster announce the discovery of an unidentified body, I’d think of the blonde 14-year-old from Utah who’d been taken from her bed at knifepoint last June.

I’d wonder when they’d find her and where she’d been hidden all this time and if she’d suffered. I did not think she would be found alive. This story has played out far too often in recent years and in it little girls do not live to see happily ever after.

On Wednesday, Smart was found alive. She was in the company of a drifter and his wife, who’d smuggled her from city to city to keep her hidden. For three months after the abduction, they’d kept her at a campsite not far from her family’s home. She was close enough to hear her uncle calling for her.

The news media called her homecoming “a miracle.”

I don’t know that I believe in miracles, but I’ve always hoped for them.

One of my earliest memories is of Marlena Childress, a 4-year-old who vanished in Tennessee 16 years ago. My 5-year-old mind was turned upside down by the news story about her on the television. A little girl, snatched from her own front yard.

My mother saw me watching and turned the television off. She assured me I was safe and that I wouldn’t disappear. I accepted this – I’d never doubted it – but I still thought about Marlena.

I wanted her to come home. I wanted one of the thousands of balloons with her face on them that volunteers released to find its way to her, a sign; a miracle. At 5, I had faith it would happen. I saw that balloon floating on the air, finally falling to the earth like a shooting star, falling right into the lap of a laughing Marlena.

Marlena is still missing. Today she would be 20 years old.

That overheard news story started a lifetime fascination with disappearing. I read extensively about Amelia Earhart, the Bermuda Triangle, but especially missing children. I’d picture this huge, white room where Marlena and Amelia spend afternoons drinking tea and playing checkers.

I realized on Wednesday that I’d been picturing Smart there too, in this ever-expanding Alice-in-Wonderland room, chatting pleasantly with Jimmy Hoffa. The land of Lost-And-Never-Found.

When I was 15 or so, I browsed www.missingkids.org, scanning faces, hoping to recognize that quiet girl who worked at the grocery story or that little boy I saw by himself in the playground after school. After one such search, I wondered to a friend, “Where do people go when they disappear?”

Alarmed, she asked if I planned to kill myself. It wasn’t that at all. I didn’t want to disappear.

My fascination with disappearing was a desire for an answer. The question was what happens when there’s a tear in the fabric of society that can’t heal? When someone dies, you mourn. When it’s a child, the entire community mourns. But when someone disappears, there is no closure. You can’t move on if you don’t have answers.

After a certain amount of time, your brain says the happy ending your heart hopes for won’t be coming. Months ago, my brain started to wonder where Elizabeth’s body lay.

On Wednesday, Elizabeth Smart went home to her family and we all remembered to hope for miracles.

Beth Hommel reminds you to hope for miracles. She can be reached at bhommel@pittnews.com.