Daily Scripture Reading: Psalm 21; Isaiah 24:1-16a; 1 Thessalonians 4:1-12

In 1991 I lost my wife, Judy, to breast cancer. My daughters were sixteen and eighteen. My older daughter, Wendy, had been away at college for two weeks when her mother died.

Wendy and Judy were best friends and Wendy did not handle this loss well. She could not control her mother’s disease and finally her death, so she chose to control what she put in her body. She began exercising to the extreme, she quit eating anything much at all and the weight loss was rapid and dramatic. Her roommate was concerned and called me weekly giving me the details.

When she came home one weekend we went to our family doctor and he thought she was just grieving and that she would snap out of it in a short amount of time. However, the pattern continued and my healthy, athletic cheerleader became a ghostly pale image of her former healthy self. She could not see what was happening to her, she thought she looked fat even though she barely weighed 100 lbs. and was 5’5” tall.

Her sister and I tried very hard to reason with her, but she simply could not see what we saw. I felt like I was living a nightmare, a dark and scary nightmare. I had just lost my wife and now I was losing my daughter. This could not happen, surely God did not want me to suffer this way.

At Christmas Wendy weighed 78 lbs. and her complexion was gray and her bones were so apparent it was scary to behold. We were now seeking help from a psychologist but she still could not see the light only darkness.

Wendy went back to school in January but days into the semester she called me to say she needed to come home because she had become too weak to climb the stairs at school.

Her cheerleading sponsor from high school called me and said that she knew a lady who was an eating disorder specialist and she thought she could really help Wendy. Her name was Hope, yea I know what are the odds?

Back home Wendy begin meeting with Hope and small strides started to be made. Her weight bottomed out at 77 lbs. Hope told Wendy one more pound of weight loss and she would hospitalize her and begin feeding her through tubes.

Month after month Wendy begin to eat gradually; she gained weight slowly. She enrolled at Hinds Community College to stay up with her classes. A family friend gave her a part time job to give her something to do.

Wendy then began gaining too much weight, she was sleepwalking and raiding the fridge at night. Hope continued to work with Wendy on healthy habits and God continued to walk with us.

By summer Wendy was back to her normal weight and had a much better outlook. She was able to go back to school with her friends. Hope had provided a light that broke through the darkness when nothing else seemed to break through. Of course, we know that God had answered our prayers and had sent Hope when we needed it and her the most.

—Larry Stowe