Article March 1, 2004 Issue

A ray of light in the darkest of days

By Channing Walker

IT WAS PAINFUL TO WATCH (I can only guess what it must have been like to live through) as a longtime friend's life completely fell apart—professionally, financially, socially, physically. The good thing about his story is that through prayer,boatloads of it, he made a rebound. His life was completely restored on all fronts, as you'll see later. I've seen other lives restored through prayer, but none where the individual has fallen so steeply, so far, and for so long.

When I first met Van—that's his unknown middle name, used here as a small gesture to his lifetime preference for privacy—he drove a gleaming sports car, a red Corvette as I recall. He looked the part of a successful Hollywood producer. Actually, his career had been in advertising. He'd had a lucrative run, including heading his own agency. He'd grown up in Europe, spoke half a dozen languages fluently, moved to United states, knew success firsthand. Van was the sharpest dresser I've ever known.

Although you couldn't notice it at first, things were already cracking up for him. The car and clothes? A thin veneer concealing deeper troubles. Over time, dents began going unfixed. Shirts started to fray. Professionally, things went south. Personally, key relationships disintegrated. Nagging health problems—perhaps rooted in a decades-long smoking habit—mushroomed.