Once when I was ill, the sense of fever was so great it felt as though I were on fire. At some point my five-year-old daughter climbed up on my bed and rested my head on her lap. She said, “Mommy, I’m going to comfort you. I’m just going to comfort you.” She said nothing more but just sat silently for a few moments before returning to her play. I was startled because she hadn’t even noticed the feverish heat I was suffering from. I realized I could be just as free of fear and fever as she was, and it was a turning point in this healing.
In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “Destroy fear, and you end fever” (p. 376). I believe that’s what happened when my daughter came to my aid. In her childlike innocence and love, she hadn’t felt the least twinge of fear, and that lifted my own thoughts.
Once the fever subsided, however, other symptoms remained, and in addition I was left with a peculiar sense of desolation—feeling empty, cheerless, and devoid of purpose. I dropped my precious Bible study and don’t even recall trying to pray. I was just “out of it.” I didn’t even want to receive phone calls or answer the door. This mental darkness hovered like a black cloud for several days.
Then, one morning, the thought came very clearly that something was trying to take me out of the healing practice. What a wake-up call! My husband and I had just entered the full-time practice of Christian Science healing and were newly listed as practitioners in the Journal. So when the suggestion came to me about being taken out of the practice, I realized it had no validity, and I could immediately reject it. I’d been devoting myself to this wonderful healing work for many years and wasn’t about to let it all go down the drain.
The turnaround was immediate. As an old cowboy song puts it, I was “back in the saddle again.” Back in vigorous action and a normal routine. The discordant physical symptoms didn’t disappear right away, but they gradually began to fade away, including bouts of severe coughing. Within two weeks, I was completely healed through prayer alone.
This blessed Science has sustained many members of my family for five generations. Recently, one of my daughters was entertaining her own grandchild. When Ariana was looking at herself in a mirror, she turned to her grandmother with bright eyes and a sweet smile and asked, “Grandma, did you know that I am God’s reflection?”
Is it any wonder that I am teaching those glorious truths of the Bible in Sunday School to the dear children of today!
Seoul, Korea
I’m the child who helped my mom that day. She completely raised my sisters and me in Christian Science, trusting that God is the one Parent—the true Father-Mother. She also joyed in our spiritual intuitions as children. She trusted our individual relationship with God and our innate ability to be receptive to and act on God’s communication to us. My parents were always letting God lead them, so my mom’s move to Korea was not a surprise to me. We’ve always embraced the world. Home has always been a spiritual concept, and not a geographical location.
