"I returned to church today. I didn't really want to go. Inertia. Laziness. But I was overwhelmed by the convention of the Christmas-Easter Christian.

The service began in shambles. Only three from my unit. One from another. We were left standing in the rain while an officer figured out how to open the door to let us in. I grumbled and mentioned to the person beside me that this was why I hadn't been in six months and why I couldn't come back for another six.

But something happened.

My heart split open with yearning to worship. I no longer considered the quality of the music or the preaching but only my own need to get naked and real before my creator. The book of the Bible John I probed and tested me all over and I fell in love with church once again.

If we don't nurture what's best in us, we shouldn't be surprised by the ugly results of our lives. I'm not going to become a better person by feeding on the same books, images, things, thoughts, ideas and relationships that colored my past. Or, if you don't like the word 'better'--I'm not going to grow, develop emotionally, broaden my horizon, widen my perspective, shift my paradigm, evolve my consciousness or be rehabilitated if I don't look beyond my same old same old.

My thoughts and notions, impulses and reactions brought me to prison. It makes sense to me, therefore, that I need to get some new ones and that I should be suspicious and careful of any old comfortable patterns. For this very practical reason, I am now drawn to spiritual matters. They are the very antithesis of everything I once held dear.

But I also find it easy to develop spiritual ruts and fall into a spiritual version of my old self. Basically the same but with a new veneer. Just as I once spirited a fine British polish, it's not so difficult to sport a Christian one. Mostly it's a trick of language. If I speak with a certain accent, I appear to be a high-falutin' educated woman. If I use other language, I appear to be a conservative evangelical Christian.

However, I'm not interested in collecting a new veneer. I just go over the old one. I want to be somebody else. Something new. Something different. Someone with a new heart. My physician has been most generous with his house calls, attending my heart condition wherever I am. But in the face of his faithful service, I have grown lazy and complacent, calling on him to serve me, instead of training my heart to serve him.

Today, during my semi-annual check up at the physician's office, I realized I would benefit from more regular laser surgery: His light to pierce my darkness. As I have said a thousand times, if I want my life to be different, I must live it differently. So I should return to church not out of Christian duty or guilt, but with a joyful expectation of being transformed and healed." (Elizabeth Haysom, Fluvanna Review, July 15, 2004).

Elizabeth Haysom is presently incarcerated at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Troy, Virginia. She is serving a 90 year sentence as an accessory to the murder of her parents in 1985. This column is from a series, published under the general heading 'Glimpses from Inside.'