AS I LIVED SECLUDED within the walls of my mind, shut away with only negative, unhappy thoughts haunting me, my fingers bled from long hours of my biting my nails, a habit I acquired as a young child. I'm not certain why I did this, but it seemed to help calm me. I heard voices—although they were actually thoughts reeling around in my head—that yelled at me in childhood: You are fat, stupid, worthless, a bad girl, lazy, and sad. You are capable of very little. I accepted these thoughts as true, burrowed them deeply into my consciousness, and suffered immensely from them right on into adulthood. My hands and my heart needed healing.
At various times in my life, through various friends and neighbors, the healing message of Christian Science touched me like a gentle butterfly resting on my shoulder—something beautiful, but every time I came near it, I let it slip away.
For example, when I was a teenager my first love, a young Christian Scientist, spent many evenings with me on my front porch discussing how to listen to the still, small voice of God (see I Kings 19:12), that speaks to us in our hearts, telling us how to silence outside negative voices. My boyfriend gave me a copy of Science and Health and invited me to church.
However, eventually we broke up, and my Science and Health sat on my bottom bookshelf. At some point, I lost it altogether. Years went by. I married and raised my two children. When my sons went off to college, I was left with an empty nest but no strong moral and spiritual foundation. I fell in love with someone other than my husband. It tore at me. I chewed my nails to help me deal with my turmoil. I injured my fingers so badly that I had to continually cover them with band–aids.
At one point during this period, an inner voice urged me, "Go see your Christian Science friend Kathryn. She will help you." I went to see her, and through tears, I blurted out that I had committed adultery. I asked if she had a copy of Science and Health I could borrow. I felt I had to make one last attempt to find answers within the pages of this book. Kathryn did not judge me, she did not lecture, she just handed me the Science and Health and said, "This is yours to keep."
I began reading the book, and I also began reading Bible verses, guided by Mary Baker Eddy's explanation of them. I struggled to understand, and then one day, as if a light bulb went on, I began to grasp what had always been blurry and unfocused—I began to understand who I am spiritually and that I'm dearly loved by God, my creator.
One day, after nearly four years of alienation from my husband and sons, I looked up from reading Science and Health. My eldest son came and stood over me. He said, "Mom, I love you. You and Dad are everything to me, and I need you to help guide me and love me. You are my mom and have always loved me without question, and I do the same with you." My husband opened his arms, too, forgiving me, and beckoning me to not feel like an outcast any longer. Healing had begun.
As I continued to study Christian Science, more and more I stopped biting my nails. I yielded to the truth of my existence as a child of God and felt the all–encompassing love of God. I began to understand that now I am created in God's image, that past mistakes and transgressions do not control my present life.
The injured fingers and nailbiting habit and my marriage began to heal as I awoke to the inner voice of God that tells me that all I need comes through God, who is Love, Light, Truth. As I continue to understand more and more of my true spiritual nature as a loved, wholesome, beautiful, and perfect idea of God, I can turn off those negative thoughts that the Bible tells us come from the "carnal mind" that "is enmity against God" (Rom. 8:7). Now I listen only to the inner voice of Truth, of God. As I hold to only true thoughts about my identity, negative ones fly away, no longer able to touch my hands or my heart.
TUCSON, ARIZONA
