I WAS RAISED in Christian Science, and I never minded being thought of as different because I relied on Christian Science instead of material remedies for healing. Life was good, and although I had had many healings in my life of everything from exam worry to injuries from a car accident, I'd never really been faced with something that made me feel out of control, outside the scope of God's love.
At least that was true until about ten years ago, when I faced what I think of as a "wilderness experience," a time when I felt completely out of control and everything that mattered to me seemed to be at risk. For a couple of years, my husband and I had been hoping to but not succeeding in starting a family, and my husband's business was in serious trouble due to factors outside his control. Then the business situation reached a critical stage. My husband was served with the first step in the process toward bankruptcy. We had only four weeks to find several million pounds (an amount entirely outside our reach) or lose our home and everything we had worked for. I felt powerless and mentally very alone.
During this time I continued to go to church and listen to the weekly Christian Science Bible Lesson on CD, but I did it because that was what I thought I was supposed to do, rather than to find comfort or inspiration. I really hit rock bottom mentally and had reached a stage where prayer, something I had happily relied on in the past, just seemed like a bunch of words, with nothing behind them to give any real comfort. I felt I had lost all faith that prayer could bring a solution.
I remember the day that this all changed. I was driving to work feeling lost and alone and trying to pray the Lord's Prayer, but I couldn't even get past the first line—it felt so meaningless. Giving up on my efforts toward formal prayer, I desperately reached out in thought for anything that could bring relief. Right away this Bible verse came to me: "Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you" (James 4:8). It immediately resonated with me. Following that thought, I realized that if I would turn around in my thought I would be closer to God. I didn't know how to take the next step, but I knew I could turn my thought from the endless human reasoning and examining of how to solve the problems and look toward God instead.
All my life I had known God to be good, caring, and loving, so I began by thinking of His goodness. And that was a real turning point for me. As soon as I began thinking of God's goodness, I felt God's presence, something I had not felt in a long time. His love for me was palpable, and my feelings of being alone disappeared in that moment.
Until this time, I had been sleeping fitfully with the constant mental thrashing that happens when you want to find an answer to something that seems unsolvable. But from that day on, each time I awoke at night, an angel message—a loving impartation from God in my thought—would bring comfort. Two Bible verses in particular kept coming to me, like a loving parent speaking to their child who awoke from a bad dream. The first was, "Peace, be still" (Mark 4:39). Each time that verse came to me, I felt the assurance that despite how storm-tossed my experience seemed to be, the peace of God that Jesus declared in that statement was a present reality. I realized I could confidently expect stillness, quietness, peace instead of a torrent of distressing thoughts about our home and family.
The second Bible verse was, "Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God" (Isa. 41:10). This reassurance of God's tender love for me brought me such comfort, hope, and confidence, that I immediately went back to sleep. These two passages continued coming to me in the night until I no longer awoke at all with disturbed thoughts and could sleep the night through.
As to the problem with my husband's business, at the eleventh hour and in an unusual way, the right parties took responsibility for the sums that were due. We did not have to pay a single penny, and the bankruptcy action ceased.
While we never did have children, at the time of the healing of mental turmoil, I was also freed from feelings of failure, loss, and bereavement. I have since had wonderful opportunities to express parenting qualities towards our friends and other family members. I have also realised that I don't need to have something or get something or be something in order to feel fulfilled and complete. My completeness is intact now and always, because that is how God made me. I don't need to be a mother to experience any part of God's love, because She is pouring out Her love to me without measure all the time. I am so grateful to be a Christian Scientist.
PEASLAKE, SURREY, UNITED KINGDOM
I AM KYLIE'S HUSBAND and can confirm her testimony. During the blackest hour, when it appeared that we would be losing our home and most of our savings through imminent bankruptcy, I asked a Christian Science practitioner for help through prayer. I will never forget her adamant insistence that the solution to what appeared as an immense problem did not lie in anything material. She made it very clear that all our needs were sourced in and supplied exclusively by the Divine, by Spirit. Although that seemed hard to grasp, I held onto these truths to the best of my ability. As a result, to some measure, I felt able to let go of the human reasoning and legal issues that appeared to lie at the heart of the dispute.
And then—what humanly seemed a miracle—happened. The two financial institutions involved, an international bank and a large insurance company that had insured the legal firm of which I was a partner, reached an out-of-court settlement. The whole bankruptcy action against me and my co-partners was withdrawn.
This was a wonderful experience. Not simply because we were released from what appeared as inevitable financial disaster. But much more because my wife and I gained the clear insight that there is always, always a law of good operating on behalf of all of us. And we learned that when we trustingly turn to that law of good, we will always be taken care of and led forward. What happened to us was not a miracle but the result of sticking with and trusting this divine law. It is indeed an enormous privilege to say that I am a student of Christian Science.
