Testimony of Healing September 5, 2016 Issue

Healed of grief

Jean Campbell Leach

I was so grateful to have a joyous marriage to a fine Christian Scientist. At one point my husband was transferred from New York City to Princeton, New Jersey, where we bought a new home in which to raise our young daughter. Three years later my husband of 17 years passed away. We loved each other dearly and had experienced so much harmony as a married couple that it was very difficult to overcome feelings of loss and grief.

My grief also affected my daughter. It was most difficult for us at 5:00 p.m. each day. That’s when my husband would have come home from work, and we would have greeted him with loving arms. One afternoon, when I was struggling against a wave of depression, my daughter handed me her Christian Science Hymnal. It opened to a hymn that begins, “How gentle God’s commands” (P. Doddridge, No. 124). The first line of the third verse stood out to me: “His goodness stands approved.”

While those words in the hymn refer to God, suddenly it became clear to me that my dear husband’s goodness, having its source in God, stood approved by God. I also saw that all the good he expressed—including in our marriage—could not possibly end. As God’s spiritual, immortal idea, he was continuing to express and experience God’s goodness, and I, too, was continuing to express and experience God’s goodness without interruption. From that moment on, I was able to live a productive and joyful life. My daughter came to feel the healing effects as the weight of grief was removed.

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