Proof of Heaven

for falling into this ditch of despair and did whatever she could to pull me
up out of it. My depression had ramifications in my work. My parents
were, of course, aware of this change, and though I knew they too forgave
it, it killed me that my career in academic neurosurgery was slumping—
and all they could do was watch from the sidelines. Without my
participation, my family was powerless to help me.
And finally, I watched as this new sadness exposed, then swept away,
something else: my last, half-acknowledged hope that there was some
personal element in the universe—some force beyond the scientific ones
I’d spent years studying. In less clinical terms, it swept away my last
belief that there might be a Being of some kind out there who truly loved
and cared about me—and that my prayers might be heard, and even
answered. After that phone call during the blizzard, the notion of a
loving, personal God—my birthright, to some degree, as a churchgoing
member of a culture that took that God with genuine seriousness—
vanished completely.
Was there a force or intelligence watching out for all of us? Who cared
about humans in a truly loving way? It was a surprise to have to finally
admit that in spite of all my medical training and experience, I was
clearly still keenly, if secretly, interested in this question, just as I’d been
much more interested in the question of my birth parents than I’d ever
realized.
Unfortunately, the answer to the question of whether there was such a
Being was the same as the answer to the question of whether my birth
parents would once again open their lives and their hearts to me.
That answer was no.