God's Child Andrew

Compelled by a calling confirmed by her family, friends and spiritual fathers, Sandy Johnson describes the life and death of her son Andrew, and the events that followed. She recounts Andrew's childhood, his sudden death in an automobile accident on the way to church, and his presence within his grief-stricken family until the time of her husband's ordination to the priesthood. Fr Duane Johnson, Andrew's fathers, writes the epilogue to his wife's courageous book. The only writing more difficult and dangerous than describing the life and death of a blessed child, with its glory and grief, is writing when the child is one's own. The pain and risks of such writing are obvious. God's grace alone allows, and even demands, that they be accepted, suffered and shared. Sandy and Fr Duane have accomplished this writing in the most gracious way. They tell Andrew's story, and their own, with awesome simplicity and disarming directness. The result is Christian martyria and homologia in their purest form: a witness and confession which must be made, whatever the cost. "For the love of Christ constrains us. (2 Corinthians 5:14) --- Fr Thomas Hopko, from the Foreword