Imagine this: Your days are so busy, what with work and raising two young children — but then things come crashing down and your life is interrupted. Just when it seems your family needs you the most, you are ripped from your home. You are accused, then convicted, of murder — and you are sentenced to prison, where you spend the next 36 years, wrongly incarcerated for a crime that you did not commit.

You might expect someone wrongfully imprisoned for decades to be angry. But Judy Henderson is not. In fact, in a recent interview, she radiated joy and determination.

Judy tells the moving story of her fight for her freedom and her family in her new book, When the Light Finds Us: From a Life Sentence to a Life Transformed. Judy talked recently about her experience, and about how she managed to raise her children during years of separation. When the crime occurred, her daughter was 12 and her son had just turned 3. The case dragged on for 10 years, and by the time Judy went to prison, her son was already 13.

“It was heartbreaking,” she said, “but I remained very active in their lives.”

Judy kept her daughter busy — enrolling her in dance classes, Brownies, then Girl Scouts.

“It was hard, but we did it!” Judy said with obvious pride. “And we formed a bond from a very young age. While it was devastating to lose her [because of] something so horrible, she ended up graduating from college summa cum laude, and she’s now director of Mother’s Refuge, a home for pregnant mothers and their children.”

Asked what was the most profound spiritual lesson she learned while in prison, Judy was quick to respond: “There’s nothing so large that God can’t step in and swing it to be a blessing and for his glory.”

Judy had only reached that realization, she said, because she was willing to be transparent with God — talking to him like he was sitting right next to her, reminding him that he had the power to change it, but he did not.

“Why would you do that?” she demanded to know. “Why would my family and my children have to suffer like this?” Perhaps it was God’s answer that touched Judy’s heart. Incarceration, Judy came to believe, was something she was meant to endure — so she could help other mothers learn how to love their children from behind bars and show them the love of God.

Rooted in Faith

Judy’s early life experience had in many ways prepared her to accept the hefty challenges she faced while in prison.

“As a child, I grew up in the church,” she recalled. “But mine was a dysfunctional family — and back in those days, everything that happened in the home stayed in the home.”

Years later, Judy was sexually molested by one of the assistant pastors at her church — an experience she described as devastating and horrible. Because of that incident she eventually, after she married, broke away from the church. She no longer prayed, and she stopped attending weekly church services.

Finding Peace with God

But during Judy’s incarceration, she began to lean once again upon God. She participated in a retreat for prisoners put on by the Catholic Church, called Residents Encounter Christ. (That program, Judy reported, is still offered regularly in the prison where she was held, and in other prisons across the United States.) Through that program, Judy began to feel the love of volunteers who cared about her, even though they didn’t know her personally. That experience of human love helped her to also understand God’s love, and she found herself on an entirely new path.

“Everybody needs to feel this,” she thought. “They need to understand how much they can be loved by people who don’t even know them, but who show them the love of God.”

Although Judy had once felt anger about her situation, she gradually released that anger and found a deep joy in the presence of God. Anger, Judy believed, will produce one of two effects:

• You can get bitter. But who cares if you are angry? No one really cares! Or
• You can get better. Judy tried to get better and to help everyone else get better, too. She set out to help the women around her grow, creating programs to support inmates and help them learn how to be good mothers — even from prison.

Since her release, Judy has determinedly supported women who remain in prison. She currently works for Catholic Charities of Kansas City-St. Joseph — helping to train receptionists to assist incoming clients with a diversity of problems, referring them to the department that could help with the client’s particular needs.

“We could not keep a receptionist!” Judy said. That position required multi-tasking and, as Judy described it, they needed to know something about everything. The ideal receptionist was one with a big heart and who really cared about the people they served. And who better to do this, Judy asked, than someone who has been in the same shoes — someone who has served a prison sentence and who understood their journey.

For Judy Henderson, the Catholic Charities office affords a unique opportunity to bond with women in need. It is such a blessing, Judy exclaims, to be a part of the good work the organization does. “I get to pray with them! I get to hug them! It’s not just a hands-out — it’s a hands-up.”

Judy’s story, as recounted in When the Light Finds Us, is now available in bookstores or online through sites like Amazon.