More than fifty years ago my husband was asked by a Christian Science practitioner to think of his creditors not as enemies but as friends who would wish to help him. My husband adopted this viewpoint, and the change in his thinking saved his building business from bankruptcy. At that time I read Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy from cover to cover. I was hardly able to put the book down, and it completely transformed my outlook on life. When I read in Science and Health (p. 475), "Man is spiritual and perfect; and because he is spiritual and perfect, he must be so understood in Christian Science," I accepted this as a statement of fact about myself. I felt free from fear of a medical warning given me earlier that we should wait for some time until I was stronger before attempting to have children. Within the next few years three healthy babies were born to us at home. On each occasion, a Christian Science nurse, who was a qualified midwife, delivered the baby. The third birth was entirely painless.
When my husband suddenly passed on in 1939, our eldest child was just seven. My material assets were little more than a heavily mortgaged home and a building business that war conditions soon forced me to close down. However, I never doubted the Father's loving care for all His children. And, like the woman in the Bible who sought Elisha's help when she had nothing but a pot of oil in the house (see II Kings 4: 1-7), I, too, was sustained by "oil," which our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, defines in Science and Health as "consecration; charity; gentleness; prayer; heavenly inspiration" (p. 592).
A sale of building material and machinery enabled me to pay off the mortgage. And I granted a tenancy of the business buildings, which are adjacent to my house, to an engineering firm. The upper floor of the office was rented for the next eleven years by the local group of Christian Scientists, which I had joined, and the Sunday School was held in my home. I had tenants in every available room, and I took part-time employment. My children, who now have children of their own, have often told me that they remember experiencing no sense of lack during their childhood in the war years. And they all received the education they would have had if their father had lived.
