One of the things I am most grateful for is the healing of the tea and coffee drinking habit. Several years ago I visited the Christian Science Benevolent Association at San Francisco. I had a great desire to be healed of this habit while I was there, and I was. I was violently ill one night. I feel sure this was the result of not having coffee. I had been accustomed to having several cups a day. I called long-distance for help from a Christian Science practitioner, who is a member of my family, and was healed of the illness. Within a month I was healed of drinking tea and coffee, and have continued to be free of the desire.
Two years ago while serving my branch church as First Reader, I tripped one Saturday on a flight of stairs at a beauty parlor. My right side and foot were injured and became very painful. The same practitioner who helped me before called for me and helped me prayerfully during the experience. I spent the rest of the day working and praying in Science. I am glad to say that I was not tempted to ask for a substitute Reader but was able, although limping, to participate in the two services next day.
I studied what Mrs. Eddy says on page 393of Science and Health: "Have no fear that matter can ache, swell, and be inflamed as the result of a law of any kind, when it is self-evident that matter can have no pain nor inflammation." I especially studied the current Lesson-Sermon from the Christian Science Quarterly, praying to bring out the spiritual meaning so that the congregation would feel the presence of the Christ and be benefited. I also studied Mrs. Eddy's letter "To a First Reader," which ends with the sentence (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 247): "The little that I have accomplished has all been done through love,—self-forgetful, patient, unfaltering tenderness."
