After considerable physical suffering I came to Christian Science for healing. I had been looking to materia medica for relief for some time, but had received no help; so, on the advice of an acquaintance who had been much benefited through Christian Science treatment, I sought the help of a practitioner. All I really wanted at that time, however, was to be freed from pain and discomfort; I did not particularly care to learn anything about God. As the daughter of a clergyman, I had ridiculed Christian Science and had brought its textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, into my father's home for that purpose. After several months of Christian Science treatment without much physical improvement, the practitioner told me to go home, sing, and be grateful. I asked him, "For what?" He said, "Have you nothing to be grateful for?" I told him I had not; that I did not have health or necessary funds for my needs, and that my friends did not even seem to care to be with me as they used to. "Well," he said, "go home and be grateful that you know God a little better than you did." I felt quite resentful and did not visit him again for some time; in fact, I tried to get another practitioner, but he sent me back to the former one. This, however, was my awakening, and for the first time in my life I commenced really to think about God.
For the first time, then, I was beginning to have the desire to know and understand God, to know the God of love, who gives only good, and who meets every need here and now. As I gradually gained this knowledge and understanding, I became acquainted with God's image and likeness, perfect man, and then I found my freedom from the inflammatory rheumatism which had held me in bondage and had prevented me from getting about, except with great pain and difficulty. Then also I found friends and all that I needed. After this change of thought the desire came to go to the Christian Science church, and there I found peace such as I had never known; and later I became a member of a branch church. I used to long for Wednesday evening to come around so that I might attend the testimony meeting. I also became a member of The Mother Church; and for being a member of the vast Christian Science organization I am most grateful. I know now that during the period of my suffering I was entertaining an angel unawares; and I am deeply grateful for what the angel has brought me,— many times more than a physical healing,—for I have really found that God is the only power and presence, and that, as Mrs. Eddy says (Science and Health, p. 14), "to be 'present with the Lord' is to have, not mere emotional ecstasy or faith, but the actual demonstration and understanding of Life as revealed in Christian Science." On the same page she writes, "This understanding casts out error and heals the sick, and with it you can speak 'as one having authority.' "— Cleveland, Ohio.
