Attending the birth of my daughter, Angela, was a wonderful blessing. This event had been greatly anticipated, and was supported by a Christian Science nurse, who attended in person, and by a Christian Science practitioner, who prayed with us from his home. My wife and I were immeasurably grateful for this, our first child, and felt her arrival was clear proof of God’s providence. And so she was, in more ways than I could have anticipated at that time.
Shortly after Angela turned one, my wife passed on. Only months earlier she had received a bleak diagnosis of an illness for which she decided to receive medical treatment, to no avail.
To say that I felt devastated would be an understatement. My world simply collapsed. I quickly found that I was saddled by a terrible sense of personal loss, and by the great disappointment that my daughter would grow up without knowing her mother. In addition, I was physically exhausted, unable to keep up the pace of a demanding job and a demanding child.
