Testimony of Healing May 24, 1999 Issue

Prisoner's life transformed

Susan Weeks

I am writing to tell you how much I appreciate knowing and living the teachings of Christian Science. I grew up in a warm, loving Christian home with church as a major part of my life. Still I had questions. As a teenager I wondered if religious commitment as I knew it really touched the depths of the sermons and Bible studies and songs I heard.

After I was married, I continued my traditional religious preference, and then drifted into a world I was told I could never leave. This was an abusive relationship that lead to an avalanche of problems and finally to prison and to overwhelming changes. My survival tools were the Bible studies and memories from my childhood religious teachings. But the horror continued for many years. Finally, after many years of isolation from family and eleven years of exile from anything I was familiar with, I ended up in prison. There I attended religious services, and I was taking part in every group I could squeeze into as I tried to put my life in order. I felt empty, numb. I was overwhelmed from the years of trauma and betrayal - and now prison!

I couldn't concentrate or read a book or even cry or sing a song or talk to a friend. I was a lost island, and I felt as though my life was over. I would go to the chapel every chance I could and pick up literature to see if anything could lift my spirit. One day I picked up a copy of the Sentinel. I read it and reread it, and I kept it in my pocket for weeks, absorbing every word. I loved this, and I wanted more. I wrote to The Mother Church in Boston, Massachusetts, and asked for more literature. Finally I received a copy of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. While I was reading this book, the overwhelming disturbance in my thought disappeared. I had been labeled a battered woman by prison counselors. I was traumatized; I was a wreck, only sleeping an hour at a time and never sleeping all night. All this torture went away. I started to feel love for people around me. I felt as though Mary Baker Eddy wrote each page just for me. As I read this truth, I was healed completely of emotional scars too painful even to discuss.

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Testimony of Healing
Prayer results in physical healing and a harmonious family life
May 24, 1999
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