Trauma can be devastating. In addition to whatever horrors accompany the incident itself, the effects can reverberate for decades. In fact, it’s widely believed that trauma never really goes away. Researchers say that the experience is destined to “live on inside us,” dictating our responses to other experiences and perhaps even permanently altering the lens through which we view the world—that the best we can do is manage it.

I know what this daily battle can be like. I had felt the effects of trauma from incidents that occurred during my early childhood. Some I remembered, but there was also plenty of evidence that something serious had happened that I had no conscious memory of. For years, I’d had exaggerated emotional responses to things that most people wouldn’t have even blinked at. As a teenager and college student, I managed as well as I could yet still felt dominated by it. But after someone introduced me to Christian Science when I was in my early twenties, suddenly there was hope. I learned that I didn’t have to just put up with the effects of trauma but could find freedom from those effects through prayer.

Jesus’ healings consistently overturned what seemed to be people’s permanent records.