About twenty-six years ago I was living in New York City, and when a friend invited me to attend a Christian Science Wednesday evening testimony meeting I did so from curiosity, expecting to be amused more than anything else. Without realizing it, I found myself regularly attending services both on Wednesday and on Sunday.
My first healing was of lumbago. The practitioner cautioned me against telling members of my family of the condition (though the outward evidence was apparent), saying that conversation about the difficulty would make it seem real to me. I followed instructions; and in three treatments was entirely healed, with no return of the ailment. Not once during this time did I discontinue my daily duties.
Even after this healing I did not conscientiously take up the study of Christian Science until about ten years later, because I thought I should have to give up many personal pleasures. In "Miscellaneous Writings" Mrs. Eddy says (p. 362), "Pleasure is no crime except when it strengthens the influence of bad inclinations or lessens the activities of virtue." When I began to understand what the right kind of pleasures were, then I was willing to proceed along the way. At that time a neighbor had nervous prostration, and at my advice we called on a practitioner of whom we had recently heard. It was through her loving-kindness and wise judgment that I came back to this wonderful truth and have since made an earnest effort to be obedient to the Manual of The Mother Church and an eager student of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" and Mrs. Eddy's other works, which I prize very highly. Through this study I have been able to overcome lonesomeness, the result of the passing on of one who was very near and dear to me. This experience has been very uplifting to me, in that I realized the nearness of God and the blessedness of His idea; and this was like a benediction, healing the sense of loss. Through this healing, self-pity was eliminated and replaced by a desire to be helpful to others.
