I AM sending these lines with a heart full of gratitude and joy, and with the hope that they may express in some degree what I feel. For a number of years my life was full of sickness and wretchedness, especially after the birth of my little son, when I suffered very severely from an abdominal trouble, besides an affection of the stomach and bowels. Later on, a nervous complaint was added, one which would have brought me either to an early grave or to the insane asylum. We tried everything that could bring relief according to human notions; I went from one specialist to another, then tried treatment by natural remedies, went to sanitariums, etc. As our financial condition was not a good one, all this meant heavy sacrifices, and there was at best only a short relief — then a breaking down the more severe. As soon as I returned to my home and performed the least task, the trouble came back and tortured me, and at times all I could do was to remain in a reclining position. It was hell on earth, for besides the physical suffering I had to contend against egotism, ambition, anger, sensitiveness; so that a word, spoken perhaps unthinkingly, would provoke me to the utmost, yea, unloosen fits of raving madness. I often besought God to show me what was right, for throughout all my tribulation I still felt that true help could come to me only from a higher source, and as even our faintest longing toward something better and higher is known to our heavenly Father, I was to experience how wonderfully divine Love guides us, even before we know it.
About a year ago I heard of Christian Science for the first time, and this through a very dear lady in Russia She wrote to me how much good she had experienced through Christian Science in times of physical distress and mental anguish, and that she now felt well and did not need any more to go to sanitariums; all of which made a deep impression upon me and set me thinking. This, then, was the message of God to me, the answer to my inward longings, as it were; a sure help to get well again. I did not hesitate one moment to get information as to where this healing Science was being practised, and shortly before Easter, last year, with trust in God, I went to Dresden, and there sought a Christian Science practitioner. What I found surpassed all my expectations. I learned to know a God who is Love; not an angry God, who pushes us into misery and lets us perish therein. I found a Father in the holiest sense of the word, one who does not forsake His children when they seek Him earnestly and abide with Him: a God who is the Principle of all being, out of whose loving hand comes good and good only. Yes, I did not think any more of the bodily ailments; they fell off one after the other. I had only to attend to the cleansing of the inward man and to remove all the mental rubbish accumulated there.
When I left Dresden, weeks after, I had begun to be a new woman. Fear, which bad been one of the chief elements of my suffering, by and by disappeared entirely, so that I now gladly leave all to God. Through the earnest and sincere study of our divinely inspired text-book, "science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," I learn more and more to understand the Bible and to apply its teachings. I see clearer and clearer when I translate our wonderful Lesson-Sermons. I did not understand one word of English when I came to this truly divine Science; but in this respect also I have been helped along by the kind practitioner, and today I translate the Lesson-Sermons easily with the help of a dictionary, which is a beautiful proof that divine Love helps us when we strive faithfully for the truth. I recognize it to be one of my highest duties to give daily all my spare time to this study, and I have experienced the rich blessings it brings. Step by step I am coming to understand the deep truths of our text-book. Could there he a more uplifting endeavor than to seek to understand God. good, more and more, so as to be able to demonstrate the truth of being? Though my understanding is small, it has enabled me to prove the truth for myself and for my little son. The child is always well now, whereas he was often afflicted with illness. He is now five years old, and has begun to declare the truth of being bravely. He begs me, for instance, to say the "scientific statement of being" (Science and Health, p. 468), when hurts himself.
