Bringing Elizabeth Home
Read Bringing Elizabeth Home Online
Authors: Ed Smart,Lois Smart
B
RINGING
Elizabeth
H
OM
E
A Journey of Faith and Hope
ED AND LOIS SMART
with Laura Morton
DOUBLEDAY
New York London Toronto Sydney Auckland
Contents
This book is dedicated with love and gratitude
to our family—the Francoms and the Smarts.
And to our six wonderful beautiful children,
Charles, Elizabeth, Andrew, Mary Katherine, Edward, and William.
To all those who helped, prayed, and searched.
And to our Heavenly Father.
Chapter 1
J
UNE
5, 2002, 3:58
A.M.
W
E AWOKE TO THE SOUND
of a voice filled with fright—that of our nine-year-old daughter, Mary Katherine.
“She's gone. Elizabeth is gone.”
Mary Katherine stood by Lois's side of the bed, her head covered by her baby blanket. It wasn't unusual to have one of our children come into our room in the middle of the night, and at first we were certain it had just been a bad dream. Mary Katherine and Elizabeth shared a room, and sometimes Elizabeth would sleep in another room, especially if Mary Katherine had kicked her one too many times in her sleep.
She went on, “You won't find her. A man came and took her. He had a gun.”
At the mention of a gun, it was obvious that something really out of the ordinary was going on, and Ed nervously sprang from bed to check every room in the house. Lois, panic rising, ran from the room and down the stairs, flicking every light switch on the wall, illuminating the kitchen and adjacent family room. We expected Elizabeth to pop up from the sofa, where she sometimes retreated. There was no motion. No child fast asleep. No sleepy-eyed angel asking, “What's going on?” Lois's eyes fell on the cut screen in the kitchen window, and she screamed in utter disbelief and shock. That's when we both realized that Mary Katherine's words had quickly become our worst nightmare.
Our daughter Elizabeth was gone.
Chapter 2
Although there are many things about this life that I do not understand,
there are some truths about which I no longer have any doubt.
—SHERI DEW
E
LIZABETH SMART
is our daughter. When she was kidnapped, she became everyone's daughter. She belonged to America. We are not sure why the media picked up on Elizabeth's story, but people became aware of her abduction all around the world. Maybe it was because the media felt an affinity to Salt Lake City, having just been there for three weeks during the 2002 Winter Olympics. We may never know the reason. What separates one missing child from another? Is it race? Money? A slow news time? A holiday?
This has been a strange, hard, sometimes rewarding, but mostly painful journey. We didn't expect to be in the situation we awoke to the morning of June 5, 2002. We never dreamed we'd someday have to face the harrowing tragedy of losing our daughter at the hands of a stranger. We've all read stories about missing children, and surely our hearts go out to those families who endure the pain of losing a child. The odds are so against bringing a child home safely when they go missing. Ninety-eight percent of abducted children do not survive beyond the first thirty days.
How many times have you seen the face of a child on a “missing person” poster, or on a flyer in the mail with your discount coupons, or on the side of a milk carton, a billboard, or the evening news? Like most people, we always glanced, but we never really bothered to take a good long look at those faces, study their features, or ask ourselves if we had possibly seen this missing child. We hear about it all the time, but we think, “It'll never happen to me.” But it can happen to you, because it happened to us. When we see those pictures now, we can't help but look at them and know the horror the parents are feeling. We truly know what they are going through.
We're the parents of six beautiful and amazing children, four boys and two girls, ranging from ages five to seventeen. Charles, our oldest son, is an avid soccer player who is now focused on mountain biking and downhill skiing. He's a senior in high school, and if you looked at his picture you'd probably correctly guess that he has a very active social life. Elizabeth, the next oldest, is a sophomore in high school this year. Andrew, who's in the eighth grade, is the practical joker in our family. He is a whiz with electronics, and we depend on him as the only person in our home who knows how to operate the audiovisual equipment. Andrew loves to snowmobile, so once as an incentive to help him take an interest in school we offered to upgrade our family snowmobile if he put in more time studying. It was the first time Andrew ever brought home straight A's. He even started reading the newspaper in addition to his schoolwork, although he was mostly just looking for that new snowmobile in the classifieds! Andrew also has a knack for playing the banjo. People have stopped us and said that Mary Katherine looks like a budding Grace Kelly. She's very artistic, both visually and musically. She loves playing her harp, painting and drawing horses, dogs, and fairies, and making clay animals, and she is currently taking a watercolor class that she very much enjoys. Her dog, Ollie, is her pride and joy. If teaching the harp doesn't work out for her, she could definitely be a veterinarian. Edward has presence—everyone knows when he is in the room. He is extremely inquisitive and seems to know everything. Even if he doesn't know the answer to a question, he'll make something up, and it always sounds viable. He became convinced that our new black Labrador, Siah, is part German shepherd because Siah is always on the lookout, and he heard that German shepherds are great watchdogs. Edward plays the piano and loves to ride his bike. He is the only one of our children who loves to snowboard. William is our baby. He is a sweet boy who loves his brothers and sisters. He's beginning to branch out and discover his interests, such as baking cookies, cutting out paper objects, and blowing big bubbles with his gum. He is also a terrific little skier. He never wants to be left out, and he needs to always be where the action is.
Our extended combined family of the Smarts (Ed's family) and Francoms (Lois's family) reaches nearly triple digits, making holidays, birthdays, and graduations rather lively and frequent events. When Elizabeth disappeared, we were so fortunate to have such a large family to depend and lean on. The Francom family and the Smart family equally supported us, offering unflinching and constant encouragement throughout the nine months Elizabeth was gone and in the months since she has been home. We are forever grateful for the love and backing of our family and friends and so many others whom we don't know but were there during our time of need.
This book is an opening of our pained hearts. Every parent, at one time or another, has surely thought about the unspeakable, unthinkable question: “What would you do if one of your children was taken from you?” It is a terrifying prospect, one we sincerely hope you will never have to face. It was by far the worst nightmare we, as a family, as a couple, and as parents could have ever imagined. The intrusion on our family extended far beyond the empty seat at the dinner table or the gaping hole in our hearts. All of our five other children felt the impact of their sister's disappearance. In many ways, when Elizabeth was taken, all of our children were taken.
Having given a great deal of thought to writing this book, we knew in our hearts that our journey is one that had to be shared because it is more than the story of our daughter's kidnapping—it is a story of great hope, strong faith, and our trust in our Heavenly Father. As a family, we are practicing members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, also known as Mormons. Our beliefs played a huge part in getting us through our crisis, but they weren't something we turned to as a result of that crisis. We have always been devout people of faith and active members of our church. Though our experience was terribly painful, through our faith and a trust in God's power we gained tremendous strength, which became the cornerstone of how we survived. Having our daughter back home, in our arms, is nothing short of a miracle. It is the ultimate proof that God answers prayers. Granted, sometimes the answer is not the one we pray for, but still, it remains an answer. We feel truly blessed that He answered our prayers the way we had hoped for, though we realize, regretfully, that is not always the outcome in kidnapping cases. We have met so many families with missing children, and we've seen how deep their pain goes. It is something you never get over. In an instant, life as you know it is changed. Not knowing Elizabeth's whereabouts was terribly painful. There were so many days we simply could not accept why someone would do something like this. We can only imagine what it is like for those families who never see their children again or hear the news that their child has been found dead. We dreaded every phone call, every knock on the door, and every time we were asked to “come down to the station” for fear we, too, would hear the unthinkable news.
What we hope to convey through our journey of faith and hope is that with a strong belief in God and His power, all things are possible.
Miracles do happen.
Former church president and prophet Spencer W. Kimball, author of
Faith Precedes the Miracle,
wrote many passages in his book that touched us and helped us understand how to better handle adversity. He wrote that in life “there are reservoirs of many kinds. Some reservoirs are to store water. Some are to store food. There should also be reservoirs of knowledge to meet future needs; reservoirs of courage to overcome the floods of fear that put uncertainty in lives; reservoirs of stamina; and reservoirs of faith—especially reservoirs of faith—so that when the world presses upon us, we stand firm and strong; when the temptations of a decaying world about us draw on our energies, sap our spiritual vitality, and seek to pull us down, we need a storage of faith that can carry us over the dull, difficult, terrifying moments, disappointments, disillusionments and adversity, want, confusion, and frustration.” We'd like to think that we discovered reservoirs of all kinds while Elizabeth was missing. We tapped our resources, both internal and external, to chart our course through this nine-month nightmare.
Since Elizabeth returned home, there have been many questions surrounding what happened to her while she was gone. As her parents, we wish to protect our daughter's privacy and will not share the terrifying details of her captivity. We feel privacy is something Elizabeth, having survived nine months of torment, is entitled to. Perhaps someday she will choose to publicly share her story. That is
her
decision to make—not ours. We are just overwhelmed to have her home, where she belongs, well on her way to recovering and getting back to being a normal teenager.
We will never be able to get those nine months back, and for that we feel robbed. Birthdays came and went. Vacations came and went. A school year passed by. We tried to live as normally as we could, but when Elizabeth was taken from us, our definition of normal changed. Given the sudden thrust into the media spotlight and the almost unbearable pain every night when we tucked our children into bed, we did the best we could. We are not perfect, but until the morning of June 5, our lives felt blessed in every way. With her disappearance, we had to reevaluate our priorities—not that they were so far out of line to begin with. Like most people, when life is sailing along as ours had been, we simply took for granted the family we had built together. Ed focused on work and Lois focused on being a stay-at-home mom. We both thought life was as close to perfect as it could get. But losing Elizabeth brought one point painfully home:
Nothing
is more important in this world than our family. Not money. Not work. Not a fancy new car or an expensive big house. Family, the prayers of so many friends and strangers, and our trust in God are what got us through this experience—and having survived, we have no doubt that we will persevere in any situation as long as we have those three things in our life.