Testimony of Healing August 31, 1998 Issue

From a bombing survivor

Mary Lee McIntyre

The terrorist bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, on April 18, 1983, took the lives of seventeen Americans and scores of Lebanese. My husband perished in the bombing, and I was wounded.

After the explosion, I managed to get to the stairwell to collect myself, knowing that I had to pray right then. Panic would not help. The scene was desperate. The first thing I clung to was simply: God is. Then, words from a hymn came to thought: "Not what I am, O Lord, but what Thou art" (Christian Science Hymnal No. 195), as well as some other ideas. A Lebanese driver picked me up and carried me to where we exited the Embassy. At the hospital, the doctors performed triage, and, as I was not among those most seriously wounded, I resumed praying as I waited on my stretcher to be washed up and sent home.

I prayed deeply for myself and everyone there. Helpful Bible verses and statements from Science and Health, memorized while in Sunday School and during a lifetime of Christian Science experiences over the years, came into consciousness. And, frankly, I prayed harder then than I had at any other time in my life. Gradually, as I became more calm, I concluded that no matter what had happened, God was with all of us right then and would show His goodness everywhere in ways we would know—to me and everybody else that day. The room where we were was quiet. The hospital staff later commented that they had never seen a more patient, quiet group of people in all their years of tending to this civil war's wounded.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

SPIRITUAL JOURNEYS

How love heals grief and loss