Susan Brock wondered for years why God would allow her to grow up as she did and to experience the heartaches of the divorce of her parents and the death of her father as a child, then her own subsequent relationship failures, along with depression as an adult. While her own father, an atheistic Jew who escaped Hitler with his parents in 1939 in what is now part of Poland often said, “How could there be a God who could allow such suffering to happen to His people?”, Susan took the opposite approach: “There has to be a God in spite of all the suffering that happens to His people!”
While Susan did not endure the horrors of what her father’s relatives experienced, she did encounter brushes with death on more than one occasion with childhood predators and later, as an adult, from her own ex-husband. Her quest for relief, peace and understanding began a life and death search for answers as she somehow knew that if her life didn’t change, she would not live to see the age of 30. The answers she found have been penned in her new book, The Promised Land, How Doing Your Homework In Your Wilderness Leads To Healthy, Lasting Relationships, published by Westbow Press and available for sale at Westbow Press, Amazon.com and in Barnes and Noble book sellers.
This manuscript chronicles the 58 year old Jacksonville resident’s quest for answers in her life, beginning at the age of twenty-four, that led to reconnection with Jesus Christ after a long hiatus. After enduring significant abuse throughout her life, the author found that the answers and healing she so desperately sought were in Christ and in Him alone. In these pages, she details her journey and shares the lessons she learned as she cooperated with God in the hard work of healing and provides thought-provoking questions, or “homework,” at the end of each chapter to aid readers in their own healing journey. The author eloquently expresses her purpose for sharing her journey with readers in the introduction which readers will most definitely be blessed when they accept this beautiful invitation:
The overriding truth that came out again and again is that God has a process for each of us as believers to bring us to a peaceful, restful, intimate, and abundantly full relationship with Him. That process begins when we find ourselves in a dry and thirsty land and ends in a place He wants all His children to discover. That place is the Promised Land. Walk with me as we enter in. The invitation extends to all believers. Come on in. Bring them in. Come with me into the Promised Land.
Susan Sperling Brock is the author of the poem “Daddy’s Little Girl,” as well as two songs, “His Marvelous Grace” and “The Promised Land.” She has also authored the short story “The Most Important Occupation in the World.” Susan has over 30 years of experience in teaching Sunday school, and she has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in public administration. She is the director of a small deaf ministry in her church in Jacksonville, Texas, and she and her husband, David are co-facilitators for Divorce Care, a 13-week video care-group series, also led out of their local church.