Riches, Loss and Redemption

An educator from Indiana moves to California, a new culture, to start a new life. She soon finds she is ill-equipped for her new surroundings, but rises like a storm to overcome or conceal any deficiencies. She is arrogant and self-confident, becoming a high society lady hosting lavish events and outlandish parties. She and her husband travel world-wide. They have multiple homes. They care for their family. They entertain their friends. They give back to their community. They support various charities. They never ever discuss their own needs, wants and providing for their future. In all the excitement and pleasure, they neglect themselves and the spiritual divine spark that brought them together. This story is one of having wealth, going through a calamitous downfall, collapse and failure and coming out the other side with simplicity and contentment. It is a life filled with abundance, affluence, some would say, "a life being lived in the lap of luxury." It is a life filled with languish, distress, misery, desperation, wretchedness and dashed hopes. It is a life filled with sorrow, remorse, penance, sack cloth and ashes. It is a life filled with recovery, redemption, atonement and satisfaction. It is life filled with love, praise and forgiveness.