Five years ago I was in the last stages of nervous prostration. An older brother had passed on with the same disease, and as he had tried medicine, travel, electricity, etc., I felt as though none of these things could save me. However, I used a great deal of medicine and did everything that I thought might help me. I kept getting worse gradually during this time, and finally I found myself in the most cruel bondage that despair and fear can weave about one. I could not read, write, sew, do any light housework, walk, or anything in fact. I would try to do a little work but would collapse on the couch, crying bitterly. I was so melancholy that I had not one moment's peace, and was in despair all the time. It seemed as though I should certainly lose my mind. Very few knew of my condition as I could not endure to have them think I was losing my mind. Besides this awful suffering I had other ailments that put me a little deeper into bondage.
Christian Science was offered me and was rejected many times because I was the daughter of a minister, and I was afraid it was wrong; but when I tried to read my Bible for comfort I would find things that it said God had done, and I would think, "God is just," yet I could not but think of the injustice manifest in what I had just read. I got to be very skeptical, and felt that I could hardly expect to be lifted out of my trouble when the Bible told of so many unkind things that God had done. Still the Bible said also, that God is Love, and I could not understand it.
At last, when it seemed as though I could not bear any more, this same kind friend that had tried so hard to help me, succeeded in showing me that Christian Science is not wrong, but the highest good. I began to take treatment and my ills dropped away from me gradually, as my understanding of God as Love, grew clearer. What a relief it was to me when I had a few moments' peace, when the terrible fear and despair left me for a little. The ailment which I most feared, nervous prostration, was the last to leave, because it was the expression of great fear.
