"Now there was a day ... and Satan also came among them" (Job 1:6 NKJ); "... The day of grief and desperate sorrow ... Then behold, at eventide, trouble!" (Is.17:11c,14 NKJ).

It's no comfort that every person's day finally comes. I felt that my day--my dark night of the soul--came that dusky December evening when our oldest son Chuck came home supposedly to enjoy the Christmas holidays and instead killed himself. He had called from college the night before and seemed happy. The option to die had already been made but he didn't tell us. He simply came home, went to the woods and hours later, in the dark, we heard him scream and then shoot himself to death.

That year I lost three basic relationships within months, and I concluded the evening that Chuck determined to give up this most precious gift of life that God had prepared me for his death through the two previous losses. Lest this sound ghastly and ghoulish, the other two deaths were of older people with heart problems. But they were enormously dear to me and their deaths sent me specifically to the Book of Job. In that respect I felt that God had plowed my soul for the planting of thoughts that would help me through the worst of the three deaths, that of my son.

Two years previous to this BC/AD (Before Chuck/After Death) event in our lives, a teacher who was my spiritual mentor and mother had sent me a book titled Power In Praise, by Merlin Carothers. I read the book and was very impressed and I began praising, even though at times I wondered about it. But it was that momentous night two years later that I applied the principle, "NOW praise and thank [God] for your present circumstances..." I knew that if I didn't do it then, there was a good possibility I might never do it again. May God help us all to utter sincere thanks in the midst of circumstances that would belie the very thought.