When Christian Science was introduced to me as a means of healing, I was to have a major operation in a few days. I had previously read some of the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, and I had no prejudice toward this religion. I had also witnessed healings in my husband's family. However, my grandfather had been a prominent doctor of the town, and I had always felt that doctors were instruments of God. My husband shared this view. I did continue praying and trying to read Science and Health again. At this time I was teaching in an orthodox Sunday School and was a firm believer that God answered our prayers if they were His will. A Bible promise that was with me all the time reads (Matt. 5:6), "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled." However, I did not feel I could rely on Science alone and went on with the operation.
Almost before I was out of bed, a dear relative was brought to us in a critical state and with no other place to go and no funds. Our own funds had been depleted, and the situation seemed very dark. In trying to care for my husband, two children, and the relative I reached a point at which I was unable to stand any longer because of pain. The doctor said that I would have to return and have the operation over again, but "man's extremity is God's opportunity."
I went to my room filled with a deep sense of injustice, despair, and pain and took Science and Health again to read. I felt there must be better answers than the ones I had hitherto had. I opened the book to the chapter on Christian Science Practice and read the allegorical account of a mental case on trial which begins on page 430. Although I did not understand much of what I read, I could see the justice of the truth brought out in the trial that one does not have to suffer as a result of loving one's neighbor, and my husband and I had been trying to do this the best we knew how. The pain left me immediately, and I was able to get up; and from that time on, I cared for my family and the relative until he was able to leave. My healing was slow because the difficulty returned periodically during a few years; but when unpleasant dispositional qualities, as a quick temper, self-pity, self-justification, and, especially, self-will, gave way to the true sense of man, which we learn in Christian Science, the condition disappeared entirely.
