Our home was divided in regard to Christian Science. My mother had been reared in Science but for some years my father was opposed to it. When I was seven I came down with typhoid fever. For a period I was unconscious. Finally when there was still no improvement the Christian Science practitioner asked my father if he wanted a doctor for me, and he vehemently answered, "Yes."
When the doctor examined me he told the family there was nothing he could do and that time was short. He said that all that he could have done for me was to keep me as cool as possible, just as the Christian Science nurse had done. After the doctor left, my father, who had become resigned to the fact that everything had been done that could be done, was able to loose the situation, and within the hour the fever broke and I regained consciousness.
I had lost much weight, had lost my memory, and had to learn to walk and talk again. My hair all fell out, and after many months when no new hair appeared the opinion was voiced more and more that I would be bald the rest of my life. My Sunday School teacher, recognizing that this was a lie about the child of God, began to pray in Christian Science. Shortly my hair began to grow in beautiful ringlets all over my head!
The following summer while on a family vacation I was healed so quickly of what appeared to be scarlet fever that we did not have to call in health authorities for a diagnosis or quarantine. The Sunday School teacher, who was now in the public practice of Christian Science, was vacationing with us, and she knew that I must arouse myself quickly instead of just lying there. She held to this statement of Mrs. Eddy's in seeing the unreality of a physical law of disease (No and Yes, p. 30): "God's law is in three words, 'I am All;' and this perfect law is ever present to rebuke any claim of another law."
Mother encouraged me to stand up and repeat "the scientific statement of being" as given in Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy (p. 468). Although feeling ill and weak, I was obedient. Three times I repeated the statement with them until I said it with conviction. The closing lines are: "Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual." The practitioner felt clearly the power of God and that all was well. I was left in bed, and she and Mother were having lunch. Very soon I also felt hungry, and noting that the rash was all gone, I jumped up with joy, quickly dressed, and joined them for lunch.
Since then I have had many healings and seen many more in my family and those around me. There is no doubt of the supremacy of God's power over material resistance.
My father did not become a Christian Scientist. However, after my brother was also healed of a problem caused by sunstroke, my father no longer insisted we take drugs but acknowledged the healing power of Christian Science and even gave copies of Science and Health to others.
No matter how great our testing times are, they are small in comparison to what the Master, Christ Jesus, and Mrs. Eddy went through to give us this blessed Christian Science which magnifies God's work to human view. Now it is up to us to fulfill in our own lives a statement of Mrs. Eddy's in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany (p. 160): "To live so as to keep human consciousness in constant relation with the divine, the spiritual, and the eternal, is to individualize infinite power; and this is Christian Science." This is my desire and prayer.
Tulsa, Oklahoma
