Since I was a child, my relatives had told me that, as my two grandmothers had diabetes, I would suffer from it also. So I grew up believing that this disease was inevitable and natural.
When I was a teenager, I began having the same symptoms of the disease as the grandmother I was living with, so I would regularly undergo all the required medical tests and follow a very strict diet.
I understood that I was part of the divine creation, and that meant that God was protecting and caring for me and for all.
Eventually, I got married and stopped working because my husband didn’t want me to work. So, when years later he left me with three young children, I had no income. At that time, my parents were ill and confined in different hospitals, so it was very hard for me to take care of them and the children. I felt so overwhelmed by all these responsibilities that my fear about diabetes predictions got worse.
To distract myself, I would visit a neighbor and would always ask her for something to read. One day, she gave me a magazine I’d never seen before: The Herald of Christian Science in Spanish. She pointed out an article on marriage and divorce.
I began to read it and felt the author was talking to me, that he had written it for me. Reading that article made me feel good. By the time I finished the article, my perspective on things had begun to change. So I decided to read other articles. All of them comforted me; they were talking directly to my heart. They were telling me that I was able to go forward, that I was useful. They were telling me that God loved me.
This impelled me to read Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, where I found the concept of God as Love, as Father, as Mother, as the infinite One who loves us all equally.
I had always been deeply concerned about inequality—that some people were happy and others not, that some had needed supply, and others didn’t. And here I was being introduced to a God who loved everybody, and that we were all His children and part of His beloved creation.
The following citation helped me a lot: “The chief stones in the temple of Christian Science are to be found in the following postulates: that Life is God, good, and not evil; that Soul is sinless, not to be found in the body; that Spirit is not, and cannot be, materialized; that Life is not subject to death; that the spiritual real man has no birth, no material life, and no death” (Science and Health, p. 288).
I began to feel part of our Father-Mother God’s world, where Spirit is All and is Life, Truth, and Love. I began to love myself. I understood that I was part of the divine creation, and that meant that God was protecting and caring for me and for all. There were no differences, no privileges, nothing unfair. It really was the world where we all would want to live and truly do live.
When I read the definition of man in Science and Health, to me it was like reaching the summit of true knowledge. It says that man is not material, but idea, the image of Love; that man is not physique (see p. 475).
This led me to read the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible. That chapter states that man was created in the image and likeness of God, which means we are the highest ideas in His creation, and His whole creation is very good. This helped me to leave behind, little by little, the material beliefs that oppress us and bring disease, sin, and death. The fear of the hereditary disease began fading, and I stopped using medication that I’d been taking for other issues.
I learned to include my whole family in my prayers, knowing that they are the beloved children of God also.
Through this new perspective about life I was able to find a job pretty quickly, which helped me to meet the financial challenges I was facing. I felt grateful, happy, and useful. I learned to include my whole family in my prayers, knowing that they are also the beloved children of God.
I began thanking God, because I realized that when we face trials, the study of Christian Science helps us to become conscious of reality, and we no longer see the one who suffers as a poor human being, but as one who already dwells in the world of Spirit, where we are all God’s children, we are all His image and likeness.
As I devoted my time to reading Science and Health, all the difficult experiences I’d been going through, from the belief in heredity, simply vanished. The symptoms of diabetes disappeared and never came back.
For me it was as though the chains—all those bonds that had kept me bound—had been broken. I had woken up to a completely new life.
I can simply say, “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift!” (II Corinthians 9:15).
