When confronted with what seemed to me unbearable loneliness and responsibility during the absence of my husband, whose work took him out of the state, I began to read the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy. I felt that I needed spiritual power to sustain me, and I found the way to know God and to depend upon Him through reading that divinely inspired book. When I came to the definition of Mind on page 469 of the textbook I saw that I had never before understood the full meaning of the words infinite and omnipotent, though I had heard them applied to God many times in sermons and prayers. The clear, logical conclusion arrived at by Mrs. Eddy that, since God is omnipotent and infinite, evil must be impotent and absent, convinced me that Christian Science was what I wanted. From that time on, our health, our supply, and our whole environment began steadily to improve. In the rearing of our children a sense of freedom and joy replaced the burdened sense of responsibility, and they either escaped or were quickly healed of so-called children's diseases.
One healing that stands out is that of croup. We were spending two weeks in a national park. One morning the youngest son awakened hardly able to speak or swallow. Guests, who were not students of Christian Science, were greatly concerned, but I asked them to carry out their plan for watching the sunrise from a cliff some miles away and to leave the child and me behind in our cabin. We read from Science and Health and talked about God's love and care for His children. We declared that His omnipotence and omnipresence could never allow us to be outside His love, whether we were at home or on a mountain-top. In a few minutes the child fell asleep, and by the time our guests returned he was perfectly well.
When in high school this same boy was healed of acute appendicitis in less than twenty-four hours through the faithful work of a practitioner. He went to school the next day and ran a quarter of a mile after school. During World War II he flew on many missions and returned unhurt. There was not the slightest trace of nervousness, restlessness, or irritability when he returned home—no sign of the strain he had been through. He told us that he had prayed every minute he had been in the air. We at home had prayed too in the beautiful and comforting way Christian Science teaches us to pray, knowing God's ever-presence as Life and Spirit and also man's safety in his changeless relation to his Father-Mother, Love.
