This spring, on Palm Sunday at dawn, my father‑in‑law, at the age of eighty‑one, was called home by God. We comforted one another, saying it was a blessed passing, and tried to send him off to heaven with joy. Yet losing a parent—no matter how old the child may be—brings a collapse of the heart and a profound sense of loss.

On the morning he passed, my husband had just finished leading the early‑dawn service at church when he suddenly clutched his chest in pain. Worried, I urged him to go to the emergency room, but he insisted on waiting a little longer. He pressed and tapped his chest as the pain continued.

When we returned home, we found a message on the answering machine: Father had passed away from a heart attack at the hospital. My husband had not yet heard the news, but his body had already begun to ache from the breaking of that deep, physical bond between parent and child. I realized anew how true it is that parents and children are one body.

After the funeral, my mother‑in‑law asked us to come help sort through Father’s belongings and see if anything important needed attention. As I stepped into the apartment where she would now live alone, I felt an unexpected awkwardness, as though the place had become strangely unfamiliar.

Mother‑in‑law laid out several notebooks Father had kept since immigrating. They were not store‑bought notebooks but handmade ones—old calendar pages and the blank backs of advertisements glued together with rice paste, lined carefully by hand. In them, he had recorded every Sunday sermon title, Scripture passage, and weekly attendance numbers from church—without missing a single week for years.

He had also written down each time he completed reading through the entire Bible. The count stopped at thirty‑nine times as of last year. And then there was one notebook filled with his prayers—page after page of tiny, earnest handwriting, each word written with the full sincerity of his soul.

“Almighty and eternal God! You hide Yourself beyond my sight, You dwell beyond my knowledge. Your thoughts are not my thoughts, Your ways are not my ways. Yet You breathed Your Spirit into my life, so that my heart might seek You and my soul might love You…

Though I hesitate in all things and fail in many, Your hand upholds my life. The eternal God is my dwelling place, and Your everlasting arms embrace me…

When I buy something, let me live as though I possess nothing; and when I have nothing, let me live as though I possess everything…

Though I cannot do the good I desire by my own strength, if I do any good, it is because You work within me and give me power…”

We could not tell whether these prayers were his own compositions or copied from somewhere. But what mattered was this: every day, Father wrestled spiritually through these long prayers, drawing closer to the Lord with each passing day of his life.

Ironically, during his lifetime, Mother often scolded him for not praying enough or not reading the Bible diligently. Yet now we discovered that, with a childlike purity of heart, he had quietly tended his soul—meditating, praying, and keeping his inner life sharp and sincere. Only now did his children and grandchildren understand and give thanks.

As the family discussed how to preserve his belongings, they decided that I should keep Father’s prayer notebook. I accepted it with deep gratitude.

People leave many things behind when they depart this world. And through those traces, they remain forever in the hearts of those who loved them. While Father‑in‑law was alive, I never truly understood him. But now, at last, I feel I know him—and I find myself wanting to walk the pilgrim path he walked, without shame.

The precious prayers he left behind come to me like a fragrant breeze at my window, drawing my heart closer again and again.

— Yoon Wan‑Hee, 6/8/1999