After a difficult time with one of my children, there were tears of disappointment, hurt feelings, a chilling fear for the one I loved dearly. Because, through the teachings of Christian Science, I had learned to affirm God's presence and my access to God-given wisdom and judgment, I refused to take steps on my own— steps I might have to retrace. So I prayed.
As I stilled personal feelings and listened for healing ideas I knew the one Mind would impart, I found myself saying aloud, "I'm not a mother." Momentarily perplexed, I almost protested. But I then realized I had received an answer, for— spiritually speaking—there are no personal parents. In reality, there is but the one Father-Mother God.
It occurred to me I had been hoping to find ways to change another; and the answered prayer was showing me, instead, the need for a change in myself. Mrs. Eddy writes in the opening chapter of the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, "Experience teaches us that we do not always receive the blessings we ask for in prayer." And, farther along in the same passage she says, "That which we desire and for which we ask, it is not always best for us to receive." Science and Health, p. 10;
