Soon after I became a parent I was stricken with polio. Because of the nature of the illness, we were obedient to the laws of the land, and a physician watched the case daily. He predicted I might not live, and if I did, my physical activity would be very limited. However, our reliance on God for healing was radical. I had the prayer of a Christian Science practitioner and the support of family members. Complete healing of partial paralysis and extreme heart damage was acknowledged by the physician, and normal health and activity were regained.
Later, a complete nervous breakdown darkened my life. I lost thirty pounds, could not stand to be left alone, and was often incoherent. Several weeks were spent with my mother in Florida. Although I could not reason or study, a Christian Science practitioner's treatment emphasized the forces of God's goodness—holding me in His constant love. I can recall trying desperately to ponder this sentence of Mary Baker Eddy's (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 215): "Whatever is governed by God, is never for an instant deprived of the light and might of intelligence and Life." I could not get completely through it once during an entire day but felt God's loving care. This truth kept recurring: "God is; that is enough to know." Gradually there were moments when my thought and body were under control. Then I would turn to study of the Bible and Science and Health. The truth of my spiritual being became more evident and outweighed the desperate, fearful moments, until I was able to return home.
Many human changes followed, and I started to rebuild my life. My daily gain was a purer, more spiritualized concept of being, Church, home, and man's completeness. Man was acknowledged as God's idea, free, joyous, and reflecting the divine Mind. I worked with this passage in Miscellaneous Writings by Mrs. Eddy (p. 185): "Self-renunciation of all that constitutes a so-called material man, and the acknowledgment and achievement of his spiritual identity as the child of God, is Science that opens the very flood-gates of heaven; whence good flows into every avenue of being, cleansing mortals of all uncleanness, destroying all suffering, and demonstrating the true image and likeness." The victory came, and my healing of the nervous breakdown was complete.
