During my most recent pregnancy, I found it difficult to retain food. I hadn't experienced any such difficulty before and found the condition discouraging. My husband was the only person who knew of the problem. I sought treatment through Christian Science, and he supported my reliance on prayer.
I remember studying these lines from Science and Health: "Admit the common hypothesis that food is the nutriment of life, and there follows the necessity for another admission in the opposite direction—that food has power to destroy life, God, through a deficiency or an excess, a quality or a quantity....
"The fact is, food does not affect the absolute Life of man, and this becomes self-evident, when we learn that God is our Life."
On one occasion during this time, I was serving in my church's Reading Room on a very active day when there were many visitors. As I began to answer one of their questions, I suddenly felt ill and wondered if I could go on. Then, ever so tenderly, the words from a favorite hymn came to my thought:
Speak gently, it is better far
To rule by love than fear;
Speak gently, let no harsh word
mar
The good we may do here.
The nausea vanished, and I completed the day joyfully.
However, the eating problem was then compounded by a severe breathing problem. In a difficult moment my husband telephoned a Christian Science practitioner for prayerful assistance. She immediately reassured us both that no adverse condition could exist in God's kingdom and that I was never outside of that kingdom; we, as His children, were already cared for and protected. She shared passages to study. The one I kept going over was the description of man found in Science and Health (see pp. 475-477).
Sunday morning I felt discouraged when my husband was leaving for his duties at church and I could not accompany him. At that point I humbly asked God what I needed to understand. As I was reading about the spiritual identity of man once again, I felt an awakening take place. I grasped something of what man truly is and is not. When this understanding dawned in my consciousness, I felt that full healing was soon to follow.
I recognized that the answer to the question "What is man?" begins with a negation: "Man is not matter; he is not made up of brain, blood, bones, and other material elements" (Science and Health) . The profound denial of what God's man is not, and the subsequent affirmation of what man is, impelled me to study further.
When my husband returned from church, he found me sitting happily upright in bed, a position that had been impossible for two days. I was able to enjoy lunch and not fear the consequences, and was free of both the eating and breathing difficulties.
A few weeks after my complete healing, I arrived at the hospital at seven in the morning, ready to deliver. This was a small facility, and a doctor had to be called in from home. One arrived quickly, and twenty minutes later I was holding our beautiful new daughter in my arms. I attribute this safe and easy delivery to the study of Christian Science, and am grateful that it lovingly requires students to demonstrate its rules in every area of their lives.
North Stonington, Connecticut
