ON THIS DAY, 17 January 1955, Davy died. Jean “Davy” Palmer Davis was just forty. She was not world famous, although she had a circle of devoted friends in both the United States and England. The significance of her death for this story is the divine intervention that preceded and accompanied it and the testimony of love and grace that followed.

Sheldon Vanauken and Davy met late in 1936 at a photography studio. He was demanding his money back for a poorly-tinted portrait (not her work). She resisted and he left in a huff. However he could not forget her. He got her name off a sales slip and asked that she be invited to a New Year’s party. Dancing, drinking, and talking together they discovered many shared interests. They fell in love. As their “pagan” love deepened, they determined to seek permanent inloveness. They strove to erect what they called “a shining barrier” against those things that breach and erode love.

They married in 1937—secretly because Vanauken’s dad disapproved of early marriages—but they lived apart while studying at different colleges. Their dream was to acquire a schooner to sail the world as a couple. They would name their boat Grey Goose because grey geese mate for life and do not take a new partner if one dies. Vanauken and Davy did not publicly declare their marriage until just before Vanauken was called to naval duty in World War II. Following Vanauken’s discharge at the end of World War II, he and Davy were able to commission Grey Goose and to cruise the Chesapeake Bay, the Florida Keys, and the Caribbean.

Vanauken became a professor at Lynchburg University. 1948 found the pair in Oxford where Vanauken was to study literature. From the start they were surrounded by Christian friends, among whom they would soon number C. S. Lewis. A complex of influences and experiences brought them to Christ.

Davy went deeper, farther, and faster in Christian growth than Vanauken, who found himself resenting God’s intrusion into their plans. God was breaching the shining barrier from above. Vanauken still wanted timeless love and to sail the Grey Goose. However, that did not seem to be God’s desire—or Davy’s if it contradicted God’s will.

Back in the United States, Vanauken threw himself into his teaching and was less in tune with Davy. Although Davy often felt unwell, she poured hours into preparation for a Sunday school class she taught, longing to win souls. Even before she sought medical advice, she had a foreboding she would die soon. She offered her life to God if he would bring Vanauken fully into the kingdom. However, she asked God for a year's extension for the sake of her Sunday school students. As it turned out she lived almost a year, able to teach for several months.

She was diagnosed with a rare liver disease. The prognosis was that she would die in six months in a coma, bleeding from the eyes. Vanauken refocused on her: the old inloveness returned. He pleaded that God would heal Davy, but if not to let her die conscious to the end and without intense pain or bleeding. Although Davy went into a coma, Vanauken was able to coax food down her throat and after several days she awoke. She remained conscious her remaining weeks, sharing Christ with medical staff and other patients. She died without bleeding.

Later Vanuaken realized Davy’s early death had been God’s mercy, because otherwise he’d have come to resent God’s place in her life and perhaps even have grown to hate both God and her. Years passed. To fill the void in his heart, he became an antiwar protester and civil rights activist.

In the '60s, I pursued the shining soap bubble of earthly joys and freedom from God, and the bubble broke as all illusions must do. And then in the 70s I found real joy and real freedom—perfect freedom—in His service.

In 1975 a series of “nudges” brought him to deep repentance. He felt impressed that the Lord wanted him to write the story of his and Davy’s love and conversion. He wrote A Severe Mercy in seventy-eight intense days over the summer of 1976.

The book, translated into several languages, touched hearts worldwide. Vanauken found himself answering thousands of letters and taking hundreds of phone calls, many from people in need of spiritual guidance or encouragement.

—Dan Graves

A similar story of love and loss is told in Through a Lens Darkly: Grief, Loss, and C. S. Lewis