The family dinners of my childhood usually included loud, animated discussions about politics, religion, and other societal issues. Well-articulated opinions flew fast and furious. It seemed that everyone at that table but me was dexterous in thought and tongue, while I stuttered and stammered and was convinced I had nothing of value to share. The more stressful the situation, the more pronounced my speech impediment.
At school I avoided attracting attention in the hope that my halting speech and perceived lack of intellectual aptitude could be hidden. The label “day dreamer” kept me off the teacher’s radar in the classroom, and a self-imposed prison of shyness kept me from participating in most extracurricular activities.
To further complicate my situation, while still a teenager I was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, which made mobility difficult. Since my voice had become virtually silent, I had found freedom and expression through dance, and now that was being taken away as well. The medical experts did not offer healing, just management of the degenerative disease. The side effects of the prescribed medications and the bleak prognosis led me to reject what I felt were the empty promises of Western medicine.
Despite my troubles, I held an abiding conviction that healing was possible, and when I was 16 years old, I set out to find it, exploring various forms of alternative medicine and theories on the mind-body connection, as well as spirituality and its link to health. Almost two decades later, and two years after finally graduating from college, I was introduced to Christian Science.
At that time it seemed that I was playing out a script of poor health, struggle, and failure. A neighbor who was aware of both my problems and my search for healing persisted until I accepted an invitation to visit her church. At the first service I attended at a Church of Christ, Scientist, I heard God’s promise: “And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten” (Joel 2:25). I left that service convinced that no matter how many years had been lost to pain and trouble, my life could be fully redeemed.
As I began studying the writings of Mary Baker Eddy and working with a Christian Science practitioner, I learned that health was an indestructible part of my divine inheritance, and I was quickly healed of the arthritis and its cumulative effects (listen to a Sentinel Radio broadcast of this testimony).
The enthusiasm I felt for what I was learning brought me to my feet nearly every week to share examples of healing at Wednesday evening testimony meetings. Soon I joined a branch church and within weeks was elected to the church’s governing board. The sense of unworthiness I’d had began to lessen as my contributions in both the testimony meetings and the board room were met with enthusiasm and gratitude.
Despite my troubles, I held an abiding conviction that healing was possible.
I understood how Moses must have felt when he thought he could not fulfill his God-given assignment because he was “slow of speech” (Exodus 4:10). Instead of excusing Moses from his assignment, God assured him that He would “be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say” (Exodus 4:12). As I rededicated my life to serving God, I knew that God’s promise to Moses applied to me as well.
We hear the term collateral damage used to describe the unintended loss that comes with the activities of war. I have cherished the idea of the “collateral benefit” gained from daily study and application of the Bible Lesson in the Christian Science Quarterly. As I learned through this study more of what God knew about me as His child—which certainly did not include a concept of me as collateral damage from a stressful childhood—difficulties with being tongue-tied began to fall away naturally.
This is where the fun really began. Several years into my branch church experience, I was elected First Reader. This new office would require me to stand up in front of an entire congregation to conduct both a Sunday service and a Wednesday testimony meeting. I put aside my fears and accepted the position, trusting that what I had been learning would sustain me in this new commitment to church.
After the first couple of months at my new post, I not only found myself loving the work, but I recognized that the reverse of the original claim of halting speech was true—I had a God-given talent for public speaking. This phenomenon was the natural consequence of gaining a better sense of my spiritual identity. Mrs. Eddy explains, “A knowledge of the Science of being develops the latent abilities and possibilities of man” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 128).
During my term as First Reader, I had been praying deeply about employment. I awoke one morning to the thought, so distinct it was as if it were spoken, “You are going to be an attorney.” I laughed out loud. This idea seemed so foreign to me that I pushed it aside as I dressed for my morning walk.
No more than half an hour later, I walked by a local paper lying open to an advertisement that caught my attention. It was for an open house at a law school, to be held in two days. Unable to ignore the significance of this coincidence, I made plans to attend the open house.
Like Jonah in the Bible, who found himself in the belly of a whale after ignoring God’s command to go to Nineveh, I had also learned the importance of obeying God’s direction. If this was what God was asking of me, I was not about to be disobedient. In spite of the trepidation I felt, it became clear that I was to take the steps necessary to apply to the school that had held the open house. Not long after, I found myself sitting in my first law school class.
In the beginning, it was a daily battle to address the thought that I was not worthy to be there. The Socratic method of teaching employed in the classes demanded that the students rise and answer difficult questions at the professors’ behest, whether or not they felt prepared to answer. Being forced to my feet in those circumstances offered the ultimate opportunity to trust, as Moses did, that divine intelligence would be with my mouth, providing both the words and the ability to articulate them.
During my second year of law school, a professor who had a reputation for bringing the most confident students to tears called on me to brief a case. When I was through, she stared at me and then eventually asked what I thought I was going to do with a law degree. My legs felt as if they were going to buckle, and I anticipated that whatever I said, her response was going to be something like “Don’t bother!”
After I answered, and while I was still standing, I waited with the other 89 students for the professor to respond. You could have heard a pin drop. When she finally spoke, she said I had a very effective and unique way of expressing myself and that I should consider specializing in litigation.
In that moment I gained a precious insight into just how thorough and inevitable Christian Science healing is. It rouses us from seeming shadows of deficiency and awakens us to our wholeness as the radiant reflection of God.
Through this experience I learned to better trust divine intelligence, which moved away mountains of pain, parted the deep waters of self-doubt, and delivered me from the shackles of a demoralizing prognosis. As I have turned to my divine Parent, I have found the courage to speak His word.
