A few minutes before midnight, I went into our toddler's room and found her having difficulty breathing. Earlier in the day she'd had a cold, but now she was much worse. I sat by the crib trying to read the Bible and Science and Health and to pray, but I became so afraid that I ran to telephone a Christian Science practitioner to help me. The practitioner could tell how frightened I was. She assured me that we could trust God, and that she would pray immediately. She also encouraged me to pray with the 23rd Psalm. Her calmness was a great assurance to me.
Either everything I have learned about God is true, or it isn't.
I thought, "Either everything I have learned about God is true, or it isn't." And at that moment I knew that I really could trust God. I calmed down and was able to remember the first two verses of the psalm: "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters." Immediately after this, the first sentence from the chapter "Prayer" in Science and Health occurred to me: "The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God, — a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love" (p. 1).
