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William Matthews lives with his three week pregnant wife Jennifer, their four year old daughter Emily, their six year old daughter Daria and their eighteen year old daughter Mallory. William and Jennifer have a strong bond in their commitment, but that bond is broken the day Jennifer and Emily are involved in a terrible car crash that ends her and Emily’s life. William is tremendously devastated by the loss of his wife, his unborn child and his four year old child. He goes through two stages of grief: The extreme and immediate outburst of sorrow, and the act of denial. William tries to hide his grief from his children as he informs them of their mother’s death, but he fails at it. He further tries to hide his grief from his children and other family members by immediately planning his wife and child’s funeral just hours after their death. William tries to cope with his grief, and the responsibility of taking care of his children as a single father by putting all of his time into working on the job, but he finds stressful problems following him there when he receives a call about Mallory’s three weeks of skipping school and the several warning notices that were sent home about her fighting with the teachers and students. William knows his daughter is acting out because of the death of Jennifer and Emily.

As he spends several days trying to work out matters with Mallory at the school, he becomes distraught when he loses his job. His problems increase when he discovers that his sister is in cahoots with his children’s school to try to take the children away from him. William feels he’s at the end of his rope as he fights in the court to keep his children, and his suffers an extreme nervous breakdown when the judge orders the children to be temporarily removed from his care. As a result of this, the children break into severe emotional sorrow and William falls into deep depression and unbelievable despair. He feels he has lost all hope and when he eventually becomes homeless, he turns to drugs and alcohol to ease his sorrows. However, it is when he’s about to attempt suicide that he’s visited by Jennifer’s sister Beth who gives him strong words of encouragement.

With Beth encouraging William to reclaim his children and his life back, he goes back before the courts to get his children back, but he finds it isn’t an easy task. However, with severe pleading from William, the judge gives him a choice: He has three months to get himself off of drugs, find himself a good paying job, and a suitable place to live. If he accomplishes all of that in the three month period, he can regain custody of his children. William feels this will be a task that will be impossible for him to complete, but with Beth’s encouragement and assistance, he checks into a drug rehab center, but he finds that getting off drugs isn’t that easy as he suffers several relapses in a one month period that causes him to go through enormous pain in trying to get clean.

Beth tries to help William as much as she can but knows he’s going to need more than just her help. It is during this time that she introduces William to someone he has never known about in his life—God. Beth’s introduction at first is ignored, but as William realizes he must try something better than what’s been in front of him, he accepts Beth’s offer of God. However he finds that his problems don’t vanish away because of his acceptance of God, but through him, William finds new meaning to the words “perseverance, faith and strength”. He uses those skills to fight pass the pain and get off drugs. In her assistance, Beth helps him financially in finding a place to live and through his discovery of God; he attains the motivation he needs to endure.

He finds several hardships trying to find a job that will pay enough to take care of himself, but as he holds on to his faith in God and in himself and he finds eventual success. He has accomplished all three goals but then disappointment hits him again—despite accomplishing all three goals, the judge orders that the children stay with his sister for an additional six months, until there is assurance that William is completely capable of raising his children. William is severely heartbroken by this; he feels that all of his hard work and belief in God hasn’t gotten him anywhere but to failure. He wants to give up, but Beth encourages him that what he is experiencing is just one of life’s tests to see if he will maintain his faith or give up and quit. William is tempted to quit, but after several tears, and hard work to maintain a stable lifestyle he proves that he’s capable to be a father to his children and the blessings come in his favor and he is granted his children back.

As the year comes to an end, William finds himself finally able to reclaim his life back with his children and they all eventually reclaim the joy they had before Jennifer and Emily’s death. As William and his children think back on all the lessons they learned during the year, there’s one lesson they remember that changed them forever—the lesson of how to live life after death.