In the winter of 1932-1933 I was one of the many who felt hopeless because of lost savings and lost employment. It was the blackest panic I had ever seen. Fear and despair occupied me day and night. I was losing weight and sleep, in fact approaching a nervous collapse. Smoking was a fourteen-year habit. I disliked my work, partly because we were forced to wait many months for our reduced salary.
A close friend reminded me that the practitioner who helped us in childhood was available. I had known about Christian Science for many years but had not applied it very seriously. After a few weeks of treatment for my financial and nervous trouble, I noticed I was forgetting to smoke and my appetite was improving. The positive work of this loving practitioner was replacing my material interests with more spiritual things. I began studying daily the Lesson-Sermons in the Christian Science Quarterly, and they were my guide through the bank moratorium. Gradually it was revealed to me that my bitter resentment toward my environment and self-condemnation for past mistakes were causing my abnormal condition.
My fear of running out of money began to dissolve. Although I worked eight months without receiving any income, I had everything I needed. Actually my family and I had plenty, and we did not need to go into debt. I was indeed grateful to God, divine Love, and have had many occasions since then to be thankful. In the summer of that year I was able to be married and start a new home. Our income is better than ever before, and we have the satisfaction of knowing that we can help other people more than we did formerly. The old smoking habit has left me completely. This experience has proved to me that "man's extremity is God's opportunity."
