I would like to prove my love and gratitude for what Christian Science has done for me by sending this testimony of healing. I had not known in years what it was to experience freedom from pain or sickness two days in succession. After going to different physicians and taking many kinds of medicine, in March, 1912, I was told that I must undergo an operation. This I submitted to, finding the trouble to be a malignant growth. I returned home, hoping to be free and well; but in this I was bitterly disappointed, because the growth returned a few months later in another place. Again I resorted to the operating knife and endured suffering beyond description; for it then seemed the only way to live. I was under the care of a doctor all this time. He did all he knew, but without results; and the third time I was told I must go to the specialist, but felt it was hopeless and useless.
Through my daughter, who had been teaching in a distant city, I heard about Christian Science, and that it had healed others. I caught at this ray of hope; and on my way to the city I stopped and talked with a Christian Science practitioner, who gave me much encouragement and began treatment. I thought, however, I must go to see the physician, and hear what he would say. I know now that I was wrong, and should not have gone for a diagnosis. I went; and was told it was the same trouble in another place, and that it was impossible to operate. So there was just God left for me.
I came home and threw away all drugs, and relied entirely on Christian Science. I remember so well writing and asking the practitioner why I had to suffer so: "If God is Love, why does He send this to me? What have I done to need this?" And the answer came, "God didn't do it;" and she explained to me it was evil, not God. Again, at this time I would waken every night with such a sense of fear that it seemed as if I would faint with it, and then lie awake for hours. On writing this to her the answer came back: "Why are you afraid any more in the dark than in the light of day? God is all around about you every instant." I wakened the night after receiving the letter, again with that awful fear; but instantly the practitioner's words came to me. The fear left, and I went directly to sleep; and this was the end of that condition, which began during my first experience in the hospital.
