Why I Wrote *Why Didn't God Stop It?When my wife died, I found myself desperately searching for answers to questions I never imagined I would have to ask. Overnight, I became the single father of three young children, and like so many others facing tragedy, I turned to the internet hoping to find someone who had walked a similar road.I remember spending hours reading story after story, searching for hope. Eventually, I found a website dedicated to people left behind after a loved one had died by suicide. One person's story described exactly what I was feeling. I couldn't stop reading because I wanted to know how they had moved forward.To my surprise, they hadn't.Their loved one had died ten years before they wrote their story, yet it read as though the tragedy had happened only yesterday. That realization stopped me in my tracks. I remember thinking, I cannot still feel like I do right now ten years from now. There has to be something better.Sixteen years later, just as my youngest child reached adulthood, I wrote SCARS: Finding Faith Through Life's Hardest Trials. In that book, I share many of the adversities I have faced throughout my life and how God faithfully carried me through them. My hope was simple: to encourage anyone walking through hardship that they were not alone.After the book was released, I recorded the audiobook. When it was finished, it came in at four hours and twenty-seven minutes. As readers began reaching out, I kept hearing the same thing:"I couldn't put it down."That was incredibly encouraging, but it also caused me to ask myself an important question:Would SCARS have helped me when Julie died?Without hesitation, my answer was yes.But then came a harder question.Would I have actually read it during those first days and weeks?Probably not.As a grieving father trying to care for one-, two-, and five-year-old children, I simply didn't have four and a half uninterrupted hours to devote to a book. My mind was overwhelmed, my heart was exhausted, and even simple tasks felt impossible.That's when I realized there was another book that needed to be written.I wanted to create something that could be placed into the hands of someone in the middle of life's darkest moments—someone asking impossible questions, someone desperate for hope, but someone who didn't have the emotional capacity to tackle a longer book. A book they could read in one sitting, or in short moments between doctor's appointments, funeral arrangements, sleepless nights, or caring for their family.That realization sent me back to the keyboard.Why Didn't God Stop It? was written for the person in the middle of the storm. It isn't a book that claims to answer every question. Instead, it points readers back to the God who remains faithful even when life doesn't make sense. My prayer is that these pages help people take their first steps toward hope, even when they don't yet have all the answers.
