A Higher Calling Read online

  HAROLD

  I wanted to support Rachel in doing something she loved, but neither of us had any idea how this one video would blow up at West Point. I was sitting at my desk in the barracks doing some schoolwork that night when she sent me the video. “Oh, cool! I’m proud of you. That’s great,” I told her, and I went back to studying, not thinking any more of it.

  That same evening, after thousands of people had already watched it and posted comments, a friend texted me and said, “Hey, man, are you doing all right?” I was like, “Yeah, man, thanks for asking,” but I had no idea why he had randomly asked. Unbeknownst to me, the video was spreading like wildfire among the Corps of Cadets, who clustered on a few different social media apps and reacted to anything that caught their collective attention, especially related to school, girls, or school and girls. Later that night, two cadets knocked on my door, which was already propped open.

  “Are you Harold Earls?”

  “Uhh, yeahhh.”

  They burst out laughing and stormed down the hall. I looked over at my roommate, completely bewildered, and then texted my friend back and asked, “What’s going on?”

  The next morning as I was walking through historic Thayer Hall to get to class, I heard a familiar voice echoing down the hallway. It was Rachel’s voice coming through the sound system inside a classroom. The instructor was showing Rachel’s video on the classroom projector! I was in shock and kept walking down the hallway, but then I saw it again and again in each classroom I passed. When I walked into my classroom to take my seat, my instructor was playing it too. The video was everywhere.

  The backlash to the video didn’t bother me. When the world disapproves of what you’re doing, you may be doing something bold and extraordinary and people just don’t realize it yet. I told Rachel to focus on the impact, not the approval.

  Even when the world seems against us, Rachel and I have always had each other’s back. I love that about us. I know it may be a tough fight, but my cornerman will always be there, showing up every day, saying, “I want you to know that I love you, I care about your future, and I’ve got your back through it all.” Everyone, no matter how resilient, needs someone who will provide encouragement and warm reassurance along the way.

  This is where true love lies, at the crossroads of continually supporting each other in the uncertainty and challenges of life and creating a path together filled with excitement, failure, and adventure. This is what I saw in Rachel’s YouTube video. It was so much more than just a silly video. That’s why I didn’t pay much attention to the haters.

  RACHEL

  Rather than letting the negativity discourage me, the fact that anyone was listening to what I had to say empowered me. I felt like I was finding my voice, a voice I didn’t have before.

  I was connecting with people simply by sharing a little piece of my life, which made girls in the same situation feel not so alone. I wasn’t going to let others decide for me what I would do with my life or what I would share. I wouldn’t let the negativity drive me to build walls or live in fear of what people would say or think about me. Negative people can tear you down or propel you forward; it’s really your choice how you’ll let them affect you. Everyone has a voice and a story, but no one is going to hear yours if you don’t speak up. It takes courage to be vulnerable and put yourself out there, but it’s also very rewarding.

  I’d been so unhappy and confused about what I was going to do with my life, while Harold was so busy and focused. So when the video went viral, it was like BOOM! You can influence people right here and now, doing what you love. I received hundreds of messages from girls who could relate to what I was thinking and feeling and who wanted me to make more videos.

  I wasn’t really thinking long term when I made my first video, and I hardly knew anything about how YouTube worked, but someone finally pointed out that people were subscribing to my YouTube channel. I didn’t even notice until I had about a hundred subscribers.

  Harold continued to support me when I decided to keep making videos. I probably would have stopped posting them if he had felt weird about it. Luckily, he didn’t. His positive attitude and resistance to outside pressure were infectious. While he was supportive, his mind remained caught up in the challenge of the climb. (Yet, in the midst of it all, he surprised me with a cruise.*) So, I threw myself into my videos, many of which pertained to wedding updates, decor, invitations, items on our registry, and even my bridal showers.

  * Watch our cruise video at Earls.org/cruise.

  April 29, 2016

  “There’s some bad weather coming,” I tell Rachel, who is currently in Colorado with her friend Hannah. “We want to be cautious, so we’re going to climb down to Base Camp and rest for a few days to allow the storm to pass.”

  Rachel knows it will be a long climb down, but she says she’s glad we’ll be getting out of the storm and heading to a safer place. She doesn’t sound worried. At least not yet.

  Soon I feel the ferocious wind whipping my body back and forth as I cautiously step one foot in front of the other. For eight hours, I trek over jagged rocks and ice until my exhausted body finally arrives safely at Base Camp. After catching my breath, I look around to see that most of the other climbers have returned by now. I don’t see Dave or Chad anywhere, and I’m starting to get concerned. I look at the time; it’s 10:30 p.m.

  They should be here by now.

  I lean out of the mess tent and yell over to Dave’s tent, “Dave! You over there?”

  The air is crisp and getting colder by the minute. The temperature is well below freezing. It’s pitch black outside with no moon. The trail above our camp resembles a dark alley, making it easy for climbers to take a wrong step. Are they injured? Sick? Maybe one of them got hurt and the other is with him or possibly going for help. Perhaps they headed over to the all-female Russian climbing team’s mess tent to socialize.

  After slipping on my unstrapped boots, I head out with a couple of others from my team to the Russian climbers’ tents.

  “Draswitcha, kak dela?” I greet them. “Have you seen our friends Dave and Chad?”

  “Nyet, we haven’t seen them,” they say.

  Now I’m really nervous.

  We check with the other international teams (the Chileans, Mexicans, and Chinese), and nobody has heard or seen anything. It’s a courtesy on this part of the mountain to keep an eye out for climbers in distress. Since we aren’t in the death zone yet, rescue is very possible. I try to rein in my imagination. I don’t want to think about what might have happened. All I know is that I need to find them…now. I begin hiking up the trail.

  It’s not long before my adrenaline is pumping, and I begin a steady jog. My headlamp is on, but I still watch the trail carefully, knowing how easy it would be to make a dangerous misstep.

  God, please help us find them.

  9

  No Food, No Cake, No Condoms

  HAROLD

  It was late May in 2015, just under a year until the Everest expedition and less than a month until our wedding. After the excitement and celebration of my graduation and commissioning as an officer in the United States Army, it was time to pack up and leave the place I had just spent the past four years, a place filled with late-night studying, early-morning formations, and lots of self-growth.

  I felt pride in my accomplishments, but the best feeling was piling all my stuff in the back of my family’s Ford Expedition and pulling out of the gates with my arm around Rachel. I was smiling so big as we drove away from the Academy for the last time. Rachel and I were finally together and could kiss our long-distance relationship goodbye, for the time being at least.

  If you added up all the days we’d actually spent together over the past two and a half years, it was something like ninety-eight days. It wasn’t much. Even crazier, I proposed after spending only fifty
-three days in person with Rachel!

  Our wedding was just two weeks after graduation, and I made sure those days were filled with quality face-to-face time to make up for the time apart. We went on hikes in the mountains and visited waterfalls, all while family members ran around frantically prepping for the wedding. I wasn’t the slightest bit nervous about the wedding; I just wanted to be married already. I couldn’t care less how the wedding looked as long as my bride was walking down the aisle. She could still be wearing that baggy camo T-shirt, and I’d be happy.

  While I didn’t put much thought into the wedding itself, I’d be lying if I didn’t mention how excited I was when I thought about our wedding night. We had both waited to have sex for the past twenty-two years (Rachel had actually just turned twenty-three), although it was anything but easy. Our fierce attraction to each other, coupled with the strain of being able to see each other only about once a month, built up the moments when we were together with so much passion. But we consciously chose to hold back, as we had decided together to wait until we were married.

  I think a lot of couples struggle with this, wondering, Why should we wait if we know we are getting married? We had this conversation one night as our feelings intensified. In the end, we leaned on the verse from 1 Corinthians 13:4 (NIV), which starts with “Love is patient.” It goes on to describe what love is in a bunch of ways, but it stuck out to us that patient was the first word to describe love. We might have known we would get married, but we hadn’t made that commitment to each other yet. So we chose to exercise our love for each other by being patient. Being on the other side now, I know it was a definite gift from God for us. Plus, waiting amped up the anticipation and made me want her even more. It was fun talking about our wedding night together.

  To be clear, while waiting was the best decision we ever made, we didn’t expect the first few times to be crazy magical, like in the movies. We had no idea what we were doing, but we had a lifetime to figure it out! And that’s the fun in it. Exploring something for the first time together is fun in and of itself.

  RACHEL

  I can’t emphasize enough how glad I am that we chose to wait. Before meeting Harold, I assumed by the time I found my person, he probably would have not waited. It was so encouraging when I learned Harold had made the same decision. It gave me confidence going into our marriage, knowing I’d never struggle with feelings of comparison.

  We got married in Cashiers, North Carolina, at a country club overlooking an alpine lake with the Appalachian Mountains behind us. I thought for sure I’d be emotional when I woke up on our wedding day, June 11, 2015, but I was calm. One of my worst fears had always been that my dad, who turned seventy shortly before my wedding, was going to pass away before he could walk me down the aisle. His brother and sister both died from heart attacks at age forty-two, and his father died from cancer at sixty-four. Thankfully, my dad was alive and thriving. I was finally going to get to share that moment with him and dance to the song “Cinderella” by Steven Curtis Chapman for our father-daughter dance, like I had always dreamed.

  That morning, I sent my maid of honor off to deliver a present for Harold that I had been working on over the years. I documented as much as I possibly could about our relationship and combined everything into a big memorabilia scrapbook so that we could always remember the stories that brought us together. I included printed Facebook messages and texts, our snail mail, and little items from our dates and wrote down all the details. That scrapbook had it all. Even the screenshot from our very first phone call.

  When it was time for the ceremony, all our friends and family were seated outside under a white tent with the most gorgeous view of the mountains in the background. There was a long stone pathway from the lawn up to the country club, where all my bridesmaids were lined up and waiting inside behind the glass doors, with my dad and me at the very end. As the music started, each one left for the long walk down the aisle.

  After my maid of honor started her walk, it was just my dad and me standing together. He was the man who had my heart from the very beginning. He held me when I was born, watched me take my first steps, and held my hand as I stepped on his toes while we danced together. This was the moment I’d dreamed about since I was a little girl. That’s when every emotion hit me. He held out his arm, and I took it. I had been his little girl my entire life. His spitfirey, curly-haired, redheaded little soccer champ was now a strong, confident woman ready to take on the world with the love of her life. Tears streamed down my face the whole way down the aisle, only increasing as my view of Harold got better. We locked eyes with so much love beaming out of us. I’m pretty sure our entire family was crying.

  The song “A Thousand Years” was playing, and I successfully made it down the aisle without tripping on my dress or fainting. But when I looked at Harold, I saw his whole body was tense. I’d never seen him so emotional. I couldn’t even focus on what the pastor was saying because I glanced down and saw that Harold’s fingers were clenched into fists. I looked into his eyes and thought, Are you okay?

  HAROLD

  I told all my groomsmen that I didn’t think I’d cry. I thought I’d just be really happy and smile a lot. Plus, I’d never cried in public before. I respect men who are connected with their emotional sides; I just didn’t think that was me. Then I saw the double doors swing open, and Rachel started coming down the aisle. To my surprise, she wasn’t wearing an extra-large camo T-shirt but an elegant long white fitted dress with lace. Her long, curly red hair was lit up from the sun setting behind her. Her green eyes locked on mine as her father held her hand. Tears started streaming down her cute freckled face as her smile broke through despite her intense emotions.

  I lost it. I immediately started crying. Like sobbing. Like awkward tears, where everyone stops looking at the bride and turns to look at the groom. It was a long walk, and I cried, then dried up, then cried again and again. It was so intense watching my beautiful bride walk down the aisle and realizing she was finally mine and I was hers. The emotions inside became so overwhelming that my body went into total lockdown. It was almost like I had a seizure, and that’s not an exaggeration.

  I was having second thoughts about getting married. Just kidding! I seriously couldn’t feel my fingers at all; everything was tingling. Rachel grabbed my fingers to try to help me relax, but when the pastor said to hold the candle, I realized I couldn’t open my fingers because they were so tightly clenched. This had never happened to me. All I could think about besides Rachel was trying to feel my hands and make my body look normal. Some of our wedding pictures are hilarious because you can see that my face and hands are super intense and pale.

  I somehow figured out how to relax toward the end of the ceremony. I kept bending my knees, practically jumping up and down, because I just wanted to kiss her!*

  After the ceremony, we went into the reception cheering, with our arms raised and the biggest smiles on our faces. We were ready to cut loose, celebrate, and crush it on the dance floor! Rachel is a dancing champ: she can salsa, slow dance, waltz, twerk, whip, nae nae, dougie, stanky leg, dab, or dab into a stanky leg. You name it, she can do it! Meanwhile, I can snap my fingers like in the movie Hitch.

  When it was time for the toasts, Rachel’s dad, who is certainly the quiet and less chatty parent, surprised everyone with a toast we’d look back on and laugh about for years to come. Well, maybe I shouldn’t call it a toast. That thing was a novel. He compared Rachel to an Arabian horse at one point. It was hard to hear him because he held the mic too far from his mouth, but he seemed to enjoy himself. He told everybody that Rachel’s mom never let him talk and this was his moment, so he took it!

  For our last dance, we had the DJ play “Let’s Get It On” by Marvin Gaye. We thought it was hilarious and the perfect way to start off our wedding night. But first, we needed to find some food. We were starving because we had been so busy at the re
ception talking to everyone that we didn’t get a bite to eat. Actually, I think I had one bite of cake, but Rachel smeared most of it on my face. Someone (the best man) was supposed to pack us some food to go, but he forgot. Not to name names, but Tommy Ferguson was my best man. We were also exhausted, but none of that really mattered because we were excited to enjoy our wedding night.

  My groomsmen were supposed to square me away with everything for the wedding night (cough, cough: condoms), but Tommy came up and said, “We totally forgot to get your stuff, man.”

  No food. No cake. And now no condoms.

  No problem. We’d go find what we needed.

  We started driving around North Carolina late at night, but Cashiers is a mountain town, and everything closes at five o’clock. Nothing was open, not even a drugstore or gas station. After about an hour of aimlessly driving, we finally found an open gas station with bars on the windows perched on a street corner, but they were out of condoms.

  We didn’t find another open place, so we headed to our hotel and decided to take our chances. People were already making bets on when we’d get pregnant; lots of them thought we’d have a honeymoon baby. While we did want to wait a little bit before having kids, we’d also be over the moon whenever God brought a little blessing into our lives.

  * Watch our wedding video at Earls.org/wedding.

  April 29, 2016

  Where is everybody?

  Tommy left just before me, and he must have been booking it, too, since I can’t see or hear any sign of him. I speed up to a fast jog and soon spot a couple of headlamps ahead.

  “Chad? Dave?” I call out. No answer.