For seven years I was in bondage to physical suffering, much of the time unable to be around. I was then living in western Nebraska, but, anticipating great help from a doctor in my old home in Illinois, I went back in the spring of 1893. After suffering all that summer and fall, I was told at last that there was no cure for me unless I could stay for some time at the hospital in Chicago and submit to an operation. As circumstances would not allow any further expense, in November I returned home, worse than when I left.
Again I was under the care of a good physician, but until the following spring was in constant pain. I tried to bear it all in patience, thinking, in my ignorance, that it was God's will that I should suffer, else he would have answered my prayers, and those of others, for my health. But all this time I was praying for health, and afterwards endeavoring to be patient and resigned to the "decrees of Providence," at the same time doctoring and trying with medicine to be relieved of those "decrees."
I had read and studied the Word of God, yet how little did I realize what that Word contained for me and for the whole world. I might have realized this had I not rejected Christian Science, for I was one who "saw not," and therefore denied the existence of Light. Having learned something of Christian Science three years before, but, through a strong prejudice, caused partly by false teaching in the town where I lived, I determined to have nothing to do with it. Afterwards, through the kind interest of friends who were students of Mrs. Eddy's books, I had the opportunity of reading some of the Christian Science literature, including one of the earlier editions of Science and Health.
