About 8 last night, Randy Lockwood left the ICU and went out to the parking garage.

 To cry.

 He’s the rock, the anchor, the strong one. And he didn’t want to break down in front of them.

 It’s been hard since the fire.

 That was a week ago on Golden Road in Chili, New York.

 A little before 10 that morning he was on the phone with Katie, his 24-year-old daughter. She was in good spirits and headed to a doctor’s appointment.

A half an hour later the mail lady saw the smoke and an old woman hung up in a window and ran to help.

That was Katie’s mother-in-law. Katie was inside with her two children, RJ, the 4-year-old boy, and Mara, the 7-month-old girl.

And it was a hell of a fire. An aggressive, smoky, advancing fire. Out of nowhere.

RJ ran in fear and confusion into the bathroom and locked the door. Katie made her way to Mara and then tried to escape and was within three feet of the front door when, overcome by the suffocating smoke, she fell.

Her head struck metal shelving as she did and it bent around her. The baby was thrown from her arms and slid under some clothing.

The mail lady doesn’t usually work that route. Any other day, any other time, and she wouldn’t have been there.

But she was there, and she saved the old woman, and she called for help, and the firefighters came quickly.

The battalion chief leapt out of his vehicle and ran directly into the smoke-choked building. He had heard there might be a child in the house and knew there wasn’t time to gear up.

No boots or coat. No air tank. Just a man with the heart of a lion.
He searched as long as he could hold his breath, and then came briefly out, took another lungful of air, and darted back into the building.

That’s when he came to the bathroom door and pushed it open and found the little boy inside.

A little boy not yet old enough for kindergarten.

The battalion chief opened the window and pushed RJ through to the rescuers outside.

When the deputy pushed open the front door it hit up against Katie, unconscious on the floor. He came in on his hands and knees and saw that she was hung up on the metal rack she had fallen against so he crawled back and called for the firefighters to bring something to cut the metal.

They quickly did and Katie was freed and the men carried her at a dead run to the ambulance.

But the deputy felt something.

In his heart he knew they weren’t done.

He said that he thought he’d seen something. In the house, he couldn’t say what it was or why it caught his attention, but he thought he’d seen something.

And he was going back in to see what it was.

The firefighters ordered him to stay out of the building. It was a dangerous fire, an uncertain structure, he couldn’t go in. They shouted for him to stop as he ran back in the door.

On his hands and knees again, in the choking smoke, unable to see or breathe, he could remember approximately how many paces he had crawled in what direction. Retracing his first path, unable to make out anything around him, he went to where he thought he was supposed to go.

And there she was.

A limp baby in a diaper.

He grabbed her and stood upright and ran.

Later, when he and the others visited the hospital to pay their respects to the family, tears rolled down his face as he recounted the events.

“I didn’t find her,” the deputy said, “she found me.”

It has been hard at the hospital. There were burns, and smoke inhalation, and an hour-by-hour, day-after-day watch, played out to the rhythm of the ventilators, waiting for signs of life.

On Sunday morning, Randy was sorrowful and distracted as he drove to the hospital. He missed his turn and ended up in the wrong part of town, driving up Lake Avenue. As he did, he noticed that he had passed a small, neighborhood church. A church where years before he had taken Katie for Girl Scouts.

As he drove, he felt the Spirit tell him to go back.

A couple of minutes later, he walked quietly into the sanctuary and sat unobtrusively in a rear pew.

They were singing a hymn.

A hymn that called believers to their knees, to come to their Master and find comfort and salvation at his hand.

Randy stepped into the aisle and fell to his knees, his head down, sobbing.

When he regained his composure, and his heart was full, he lifted his head and opened his eyes. Most of the congregation had gathered around him, kneeling.

He said to a woman, “I don’t worship in this house, but I am of your family.”

“I know you are,” she answered.

Then she took his hand and walked him to the front, where he spoke to the worshippers, telling them what his daughter and her children were passing through, and testifying to them of the goodness of God.

The days since have been hard. The news has not all been good. The fight for life is not always rewarded. And last night he had to step outside.

To leave the bedside and the gathered family.

He had to go outside and cry.

Which is what a loving Father does when he sees his children suffer.