The Children Who Didn’t Choose the Calling

During my conversation with Todd Bogardus on North of Normal, he told me about a search and rescue mission on Franconia Ridge.

It was the rescue that later became the subject of Ty Gagne’s book, The Last Traverse.

Two hikers, James Osborne and Fred Fredrickson, had become stranded in extreme winter weather. They had expected to complete a day hike, but conditions changed quickly above treeline. They were not prepared to spend the night.

Todd was the incident commander.

He told me about bringing together the different search and rescue teams and sending people into the mountains from multiple directions. Nobody knew exactly where the hikers were. The searchers were looking for anything that might help them narrow the area. Footprints. A piece of equipment. Some sign that James and Fred had passed through.

The hours kept going.

Todd called in the New Hampshire Army National Guard, but the weather made it difficult for the Black Hawk to reach the ridge.

Eventually, a ground search team found the men near Little Haystack. James was alive but severely hypothermic. Fred had died.

They still had to get them off the mountain.

Todd told me the clouds were too thick and the wind too strong for the Black Hawk to come in. Then the sky opened over the exact area where the helicopter needed to go.

The Black Hawk reached them.

It carried James off the mountain and returned for Fred and members of the rescue team.

Todd believed he had witnessed a miracle.

I could see that he still felt something when he talked about it. After such a long day, with so many things that could have gone differently, there had been this brief opening in the sky. Long enough to get the helicopter through. Long enough to give James a chance to survive.

When Todd finished telling the story, I asked him what it was like when he finally got home.

In my mind, that was the ending.

The hikers were off the mountain. The search teams were coming out. The helicopter had completed its work. Todd could go home, take off his boots, and finally let the day be over.

Todd quickly educated me.

The mission was not over just because he went home.

There were still phone calls. Members of the press wanted information. Reports had to be completed. Every decision and detail had to be documented.

There were hospital visits and check-ins.

There were rescuers to follow up with. There was a survivor whose life had changed. There was a family grieving the person who did not survive.

There were questions that did not disappear when the helicopter left.

Todd may have physically gone home, but the mission went with him.

Then another call could come.

The next emergency did not wait until the reports were finished. It did not wait for him to sleep, spend time with his family, or process whatever had happened during the last mission.

Somebody else could become lost. Somebody else could get injured. Another family could suddenly need him.

The phone could ring at any time.

Todd spent 24 years with New Hampshire Fish and Game. He told me that when his phone rang during those years, the question was not always what time he would be home.

It was what day he would be back.

Today, he works in the private sector. When his phone rings now, he can usually tell his family he will be back within an hour.

That is a very different life.

As our conversation continued, Todd talked about the effect his career had on his family. He missed birthdays, celebrations, and other important events because he was working.

Because somebody needed rescuing.

Even when Todd was home, part of him might still be inside the mission he had just left. There were calls to return, people to check on, and reports that still needed to be written.

Then the phone might ring again.

His family lived around that.

When Todd spoke about it, he described it as a sacrifice his family had made.

I noticed that he got a little emotional.

I do not think anyone listening could hear it, but I could see it in his eyes. I saw gratitude and humility. I saw that he understood the sacrifice his family had made because of a decision he had made.

There was a lot of processing going on for me as I sat across from him.

I am not a parent, so there is a certain level of Todd’s experience that I cannot relate to. I do not know what it feels like to be responsible for people who desperately need help while also knowing that my children need me at home.

But I can relate to it as a child.

When I was ten years old, my parents decided to become missionaries in Ecuador.

Their calling in life became saving lost souls.

Todd was involved in the literal work of rescuing people from mountains. My parents believed they were saving people from eternal damnation and hell.

We were also in the mountains, although that is a strange connection to make.

The stronger connection was that the mission was never really over.

My parents were basically on call all the time for the people they were serving and the community we lived in.

There were people who needed prayer. People who needed counseling, transportation, money, food, guidance, or some other kind of support.

There was always someone who needed something.

Their calling shaped where we lived, how we spent our time, what we believed, and what was expected of us.

My siblings and I did not choose Ecuador.

We did not choose missionary work. We did not choose our parents’ calling or decide what we were willing to sacrifice for it.

We were children.

The decision was made, and we went.

I want to be clear that I am not saying that anyone was entirely right or wrong. I am not saying that everything about our life in Ecuador was good or bad.

It simply is.

But it is hard as a child to watch your parents help other people over and over again and not feel like you are getting the help you need.

What I needed was more of their physical presence.

I needed them to be there.

Not only in the same country or inside the same house, but there with me. Available. Not always being pulled toward the next person, the next problem, or the next need.

I needed more emotional support.

I needed room for what I was feeling, even when my feelings did not fit neatly into the story of our family following a calling.

And I needed the freedom to choose differently.

That may be the hardest part for me to say out loud.

When your parents believe their choices are connected to eternal life, salvation, heaven, and hell, it is difficult to experience those choices as simply one way of living.

There is a right way and a wrong way.

There are people who are saved and people who are lost.

There are beliefs you are supposed to accept because the stakes are too high to question them.

But I needed room to become my own person.

I needed the freedom to decide what I believed, what I valued, and what kind of life I wanted without feeling that choosing differently meant I was rejecting my parents or everything they had sacrificed.

I needed space for my life to be mine.

I did not know how to say any of that when I was ten.

I was a child trying to make sense of a decision that had already been made for me. I was expected to live inside my parents’ calling before I was old enough to know whether I shared it.

That has had an impact on me.

I think it would be unreasonable to expect every parent in the world to figure out how to raise children without any sacrifices being made.

That is simply not the reality.

Parents make decisions. They choose careers, relationships, places to live, religious beliefs, financial priorities, and responsibilities. Their children live inside those choices.

Sometimes the choices are necessary.

Sometimes they are made with love.

Sometimes they help other people.

And sometimes they still hurt the children who did not get to choose them.

I believe Todd was needed.

James and Fred needed him on Franconia Ridge. The rescuers needed someone coordinating the mission. The families involved needed someone willing to keep making decisions as the hours passed and the weather continued to work against them.

New Hampshire needed Todd to say yes to that role.

People needed my parents too.

There were people in Ecuador who received help because my parents were there. People who were fed, supported, listened to, or cared for.

I cannot honestly say that none of that mattered simply because it was difficult for me.

But I also cannot say that the good they did erased what I needed from them.

Both are true.

That was what I saw in Todd’s face.

He seemed to understand that the work mattered and that it had cost his family something.

He did not talk about himself as the only person who had sacrificed.

He recognized that his wife and children had sacrificed too.

I think that recognition matters.

It does not bring back a missed birthday. It does not recreate the moments when a child wanted a parent who was somewhere else helping someone.

It does not change the past.

But there is something meaningful about a parent understanding that their calling did not only belong to them.

Their children had to live inside it too.

Maybe that is part of what I wanted.

I wanted acknowledgment that their calling cost me something.

That I needed more physical presence.

That I needed more emotional support.

That I needed the freedom to choose a different life without that choice carrying so much fear and weight.

I needed those things, even while other people needed my parents.

Both were true.

I wonder how many parents are making choices they believe are necessary without realizing what those choices may be costing their children.

That does not always mean the choice was wrong. But acknowledgment matters.

To say, “I know my decisions affected you. I know you needed things from me that I did not give you. I know you sacrificed too.”

It cannot change the past.

But it may open a path toward grace, understanding, and acceptance.

Sometimes healing begins when a child no longer has to fight to prove that their experience was real.

-Amanda