The Red Pen

I handed my father the pen I had brought for corrections to the first complete sixty pages of my novel. He popped the top off and armed himself, ready to start making scribbles on the first sentence. I stopped him, pointing out that this was the hardest sixty pages for me to write, and I was serious about this. I asked him to be constructive, and make needed corrections, but to be kind and not to mark out everything I had written just because he had the power. He relaxed, and actually read...
The sentence that keeps bothering people happens in the first paragraph. "He prayed for her to wake, and he prayed for her to sleep", everyone stops at this and tells me it makes no sense, but when I tell them to read the following sentence, they say "Ah ha!" and like it. Therefore I am torn on if I should edit it or not. It's like a wall, but when you keep reading, you see why the wall was built... so I'm pondering it...
Besides grammatical errors I made that I for some reason totally look over when I read it myself, he liked it. He said it was good because it starts out interesting, keeps your attention, and grows from there. He enjoyed the way each scene became more and more exciting, and he grew attached to the characters, and he said it was upsetting when I offed one of them. He picked up on a character that is mentioned early on, and wanted to know if he was coming back to the story...
All in all, he said it was better than a lot of books he reads because there were no boring parts, no info dumps. There wasn’t a piece that was pointless. My father told me he cant wait to read the second part.
I asked if it was the greatest book he'd ever read, and he replied "Well, I cant say that, you haven’t finished it."
And then I knew he was being honest and not just being nice to his daughter.
All in all, a very productive review. I need to go through and correct some things, but it went well. Now, onto the second chunk.