"Love alone is Life," writes Mrs. Eddy (Poems, p. 7). For a time, I lost sight of this life-giving fact, and as a result was later required to prove the unreality of death.
My husband, becoming a semi-invalid and incapacitated for work, lost his position. Burdened with indebtedness at the beginning of the depression era, I was forced to assume the full support of my husband, our small baby, and myself. Rebelling at what seemed to me very unjust and unhappy conditions, I developed a severe case of self-pity. Self-pity, having not a single quality of Love, shuts out Love and its activities, whose expression is life. I found myself yearning for rest from my responsibilities and labors, and I then believed that death promised an extended rest.
This erroneous state of thought expressed itself in declining health and brought me to "the valley of the shadow of death." I was consenting to death as a friend, a friend who I believed could give me something that life lacked, when I was suddenly awakened from this false sense of peace. The thought, "This is death," came to me, but it was followed instantly by the affirmation, "I cannot die; I have lived too many of the qualities of God, and they are undying." When I regained consciousness, the dear, faithful nurse, sitting beside my bed, was reading aloud these words from a beloved hymn (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 76):
