Author Charles F. Sumner Finds Renewed Sense of Faith at Wife's Deathbed

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"I saw my life without her as an atonement, and I became the believer I was meant to be. I understood that I was hopeless without Him for my meaning, that unless my existence was linked to her eternity as our salvation, I had no meaning." It is this stark revelation written in Charles F. Sumner's heart-wrenching memoir, "A World of Lost Love" (published by WestBow Press).

Sumner's wife, Allison, had Hepatitis C and was blind. A few minutes before she passed away, she found himself wishing he had time to address two unresolved issues they had. The first was that she had once fallen in the bathroom and broke her hip. At the time, he did not help her. "I was not prepared to save her psychologically and didn't have time," he added. Eighteen months earlier, at the age 76, she was raped in the dressing room of a city swimming pool.

"I might have hurried to save her from falling, and I did not take her trauma from her with love and through Jesus Christ," Sumner writes. "I was inhibited and failed her in her fall. I would have no freedom to live on if we hadn't been saved by Christ by the understanding I carried in my face. I sat down near her and prayed for Jesus Christ to come into my sorrow in my face."

Sumner says that Evelyn opened her blind eyes and saw his feelings with Christ of sorrow and smiled instantly, twice, with a huge happiness that he'd never seen in her for over 45 years of marriage. "It was a smile of goodness and happiness, that she gave me an image of my wife 10 years earlier, when she hadn't experienced rape. I thank my lady and Jesus for giving us this wonderful ending to her life and the resolution of our conflicts."

With candor and introspection, Sumner recalls these moments and reveals how his journey out of grief and sorrow ultimately led him to a renewed sense of faith.

About the Author
Charles F. Sumner has a degree in journalism and is completing graduate work. He is a longtime student of human behavior. Sumner lives in Lake Havasu City, Ariz. and has a love of the desert, fishing and boating.