Travis Suit: Adversity is the Starting Line for Courage. Lessons from Piper.

At the Podium with Patrick Huey

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Love is Doing the Impossible

Travis Suit did the impossible. He paddled boarded 80 miles from Bimini to South Florida to raise money for his daughter. He describes that grueling time in the ocean as crossing a Blue Desert. As he says with tears lovingly filling his eyes, “I can’t help but see how beautiful adversity can be for transforming the perception of life into just a moment-by-moment miracle. I never knew the greatest gift in my life was going to be my daughter and this disease.” His daughter’s name is Piper. Her disease is Cystic Fibrosis. A condition which leaves those who suffer with it, fighting to simply breathe. Her life and his were forever transformed by her diagnosis when she was just four years old. At that young age, Piper had to physically and emotionally face the significant ups and downs of her health struggles which at one point led to her doctors installing a feeding tube in her stomach. Travis had to figure out how to keep his daughter alive and keep himself clear about supporting her through a disease that is described as terminal. He accomplished both by being honest with Piper about the seriousness of her situation. By learning to be bold in the face of fear. By embracing the need for surrender in his own life and believing that something greater would come from Piper’s diagnosis.

That something greater Travis hoped for was his establishing of a nonprofit called Piper’s Angels Foundationthat is helping Piper and the thousands of other people like her, live fuller and hopefully longer lives with Cystic Fibrosis. An organization that “transforms pain into light, grief into beauty and breath into song.”

But what comes through in our conversation is that the transformational hope that Travis talks about with such depth of emotion did not come effortlessly or quickly. He spent years searching for the solutions that were going to help him find his way to the unbound peace that he feels when he discusses Piper’s diagnosis today. It isn’t an easy peace that he describes. It is a peace he had to find through watching his daughter suffer in pain in hospitals. It is a peace that had to come with his acceptance. Acceptance of all the suffering and those who suffer in the world. Acceptance that as he looks for more answers, he will surely find more questions – “What if I fail?”

It is ultimately a peace that comes from the big lesson that Piper taught him that married the mission with the man. As Travis says, “She showed up here to teach so many people what community and love is.” And to see God in everyone and everything.
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