FORT WAYNE – On the dining room wall, draped in shadow, hangs The Man of Sorrows, done in charcoal – his eyes downcast, face lined with cares.

This is not the Jesus of Palm Sunday, riding triumphantly into Jerusalem, being hailed as king and savior. This is the Jesus of the Garden of Gethsemane, where he knows he is just hours from being publicly executed.

Just a few feet away in the living room could be the sun itself: Maria Fatima Dunifon, a 7-month-old orbited by happy parents and delirious grandparents. When she coos, their worlds stop; when she smiles they come undone. Even when she sleeps contentedly, the room seems to revolve around her.

But the painting in the dining room is never far away, and neither are the memories of the dark, scary days, weeks and months that came before, weeks when Sofia and Martin Dunifon were not even allowed to touch their baby girl because her hold on life was so tenuous.

For months they lived in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Lutheran Hospital. There were days when it seemed her chances of dying were higher than those of living, let alone thriving like she seems to be now.

Fatima was born at 24 weeks, weighing just 1-pound, 4-ounces. Ignoring her due date of Jan. 8 by an entire season, she arrived Sept. 18 – so tiny, so fragile that they had to wait two weeks to take her footprints. Her chances of survival were not much better than your chances to correctly call “heads” or “tails.”

How dire was her situation?

For babies born before 23 weeks, the chances of survival are so low and the chances of long-term problems for the rare baby who does survive are so high that the American Association of Pediatrics says doctors can choose not to start resuscitation efforts in the delivery room.

Born just days after that 23-week point, she was named Maria Fatima for the visions that shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal, saw of Mary telling them she herself would carry them to heaven when they died.

But tiny Fatima was a fighter. Her translucent skin and delicate body hid a formidable will to live.

For Sofia, who stays home with the baby, it’s easy to put those memories away, easy to look at the now 11-pound baby she lovingly calls “Fat-Fat” and think only of joy. Now 21 inches, Fatima has doubled in length in the last seven months.

For Martin – who said at the time, “You wonder, is it going to be OK to fall in love with her?” – it’s still easier to be afraid, to worry whether she’ll really be all right.

“I don’t know that it’s really dawned on me yet” that she’s going to make it, he admits.

Even Sofia is surprised by her husband’s response.

“Really?” she asks him. “What are you waiting for?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I’m waiting for that moment when you just know. There’s been little moments. But no big, defining moment.”

Fatima’s seven months have been a series of little moments: Preemies’ lungs are not fully developed and they often stop breathing entirely – but time between alarms from the monitor alerting the Dunifons that Fatima had stopped breathing grew further apart until by February they stopped all together. There was a bigger moment a month ago when doctors took her off the monitor entirely.

There were the moments when the expected infections never occurred, or the expected cranial bleeding never happened.

When the doctor said her retinas appeared to be developing normally. When she tolerated feedings when infants in her condition often do not.

And the list goes on – each one a tiny miracle on its own.

There was the moment Dr. James Cameron released Fatima from Lutheran Hospital – Dec. 19 – a day early so he could do the honors himself.

“She got discharged by the man who saved her life and took care of her,” Sofia says.

That same day, Abbie, Ellie and Isaac – Martin’s children from a previous marriage – finally got to meet the sibling they had only been able to see in photos for three months.

There was also the miracle of community in a world that seems defined by isolation and virtual friendships: Hundreds of people around the world were praying for Fatima and her family.

Sofia still gets recognized and told by strangers that they were praying for her baby.

There’s the miracle of the technology in the NICU, and the miracle of insurance to pay for most of it: The bills – so far – total more than $1 million.

“The moral of this story is it’s very expensive – but it’s worth it,” Martin said. “You can’t put a price on it,” Sofia adds.

You also can’t put a price on moments like the first time Martin and Sofia took their new baby to Sunday Mass.

After all the months in the NICU, the agony of watching your intubated baby silently crying – tears running down her cheeks but no sound coming out because of the breathing tube down her throat – and being unable to touch her, hold her or comfort her, after the weeks and months of fear, they were at church.

Together, as a family.

When the Dunifons went forward for communion, the Rev. Jim Shafer, pastor at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, held out his hand and prayed for God to bless Fatima. Sofia tears up talking about it even now.

“He blessed her by name,” she said, “and it was like, ‘We’re home.’ It was beautiful and like everything’s going to be fine.”

Shafer blesses dozens and dozens of children every week, but he remembers that blessing vividly.

“They weren’t the only two who had tears in their eyes, because I did, too,” Shafer says. “It was just a very special moment.”

Faith has always been central to the Dunifons’ lives, but even Shafer could see that this was a moment when faith in the abstract became vividly real.

“It was like the whole God thing falling into place in one moment,” Shafer says. “It was the miracle of the child, the miracle of the child living … Hundreds of people were praying for them and that little girl. It brought tears to Mom, Dad, and me.”

Rarely in life do we get to see the culmination of a plan. Mired in the day-to-day, we get wrapped up in Palm Sunday, the confusion of the Last Supper and the grief of the Crucifixion, forgetting that all of those are unavoidable steps leading to Easter’s Resurrection.

There can be no destination without a journey.

“It was definitely a journey worth going through for this result,” Sofia said while a grandparent held Fatima in the air and she stretched out like Superman. “You don’t hear about miracles a lot these days, but there’s a whole NICU full of them. And here’s one of them right now.”

dstockman@jg.net