My three-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter had stayed overnight at my home, but never for five days. By the third day she was beginning to be a bit weepy about missing Mommy and Daddy and was getting generally grumpy, including about going to church, which she had attended only once before.
The Sunday School teacher addressed her concerns about missing her parents. When I greeted her right after the service, her very first words were, “Church helped me not to miss Mommy and Daddy.” Some of the thoughts shared by her teacher during class were that God is our Mother-Father and that Love is being Love no matter where our parents happen to be. It was a complete healing, and she never again mentioned missing them. She was happy during the whole rest of the visit. And the issue has not come up in subsequent visits, either.
While reflecting on her comments, I thought about the common phrase, “I miss you.” It implies that there is a loss, something incomplete about our experience at the moment. Man—meaning you and I—is understood in Christian Science to be spiritual, and a complete idea of God (see Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 475). This completeness makes it impossible for anything to be really missing.
