Following a separation from someone with whom her activities and happiness had been closely interwoven, a woman worked faithfully in accordance with her understanding of Christian Science for a healing of grief, but with no apparent effect for several days. She courageously continued with her business during that period, but one day she felt it would be impossible for her to go on without relief from this depressing sorrow.
She then considered seriously how her work in Science had fallen short and what more she could do. She had recognized that from the standpoint of absolute Science the separation had not really occurred, that it was impossible for her, as God's likeness or idea, to be separated from God or from another idea; therefore nothing had really happened to obscure or qualify in the smallest degree the joy and harmony of her true being. She had seen with not a little clarity and conviction that the seemingly cruel experience had never left the realm of belief, for belief and believer are figments of the same mortal illusion, and together they must vanish when God is understood as the only Mind.
Her custom had long been to bring "into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ" (II Cor. 10:5). She knew that this was the way to demonstrate Christian Science, and during this trial she had sought even more earnestly to do this. What could she do further to gain a more complete recognition of her true self? Later in the day in reading "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" by Mary Baker Eddy, she came across a letter which the author had written to the members of a Christian Science church stating that she could not be present at its dedication. Mrs. Eddy added (p. 193), "His presence with you will bring to your hearts so much of heaven that you will not feel my absence." Here was the answer to her prayer: her need was to be conscious of God as ever present, and that consciousness would bring so much of bliss and heaven to her heart that she would not feel the absence of a dear one.
