By practically universal consent, we are believed to be the product of human parents, born into matter by material means. That is what I was taught while I was growing up and how I thought of myself. I was a great believer in romantic love, or life according to the happy endings we often see in the movies. While in college, I started dating someone who showered me with attention. I grew to depend on the relationship for my happiness and self-worth.
I had been raised to uphold a standard of morality and to remain a virgin until marriage. In the college environment, that standard got muddled. After dating my boyfriend for two years, I became pregnant.
We sought counseling from a minister, who was thorough in advising us about our options. He warned that abortion would be the most devastating of them. So we planned to keep the pregnancy secret, elope, and have the child. But when pressed to make good on his part of the plan, my boyfriend backed out.
Having no other spiritual, emotional, or financial resources, I turned to my parents. They were very disappointed in me. To save face with family and friends, abortion seemed to be the best option to them. They assured me that afterward, I could go on with my life as though nothing had happened. Feeling cornered, I gave in.
I had the best of care during the medical procedure, but it was impossible for me to go on with my life as though nothing had happened. The “big romance” was over. I was disillusioned and angry. I had lost my idealism and innocence. I gave up on religion altogether and embraced a lifestyle that included promiscuity, a disdain for convention with regard to marriage and child rearing, and a trail of abusive relationships. I was without a positive direction for my life.
As I worked through the consequences I experienced—the emotional pain and resulting hardness of heart—from having had an abortion, I began to question the lifestyle I’d adopted and to search for spiritual answers concerning life and death. This search eventually led me to a Christian Science Reading Room.
There, I learned that Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, had endured much hardship, including a divorce and a long separation from her only child. I immediately felt a bond with her. As I read her writings, along with the Bible, I gained a spiritual perspective on the events in my life. In her major work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, she writes: “Trials teach mortals not to lean on a material staff,—a broken reed, which pierces the heart.… Spiritual development germinates not from seed sown in the soil of material hopes, but when these decay, Love propagates anew the higher joys of Spirit, which have no taint of earth” (p. 66).
These words gave me hope that the past was redeemable. As I continued my study of Christian Science, I gained an understanding of the word redemption. It requires giving up material beliefs and sin, and changing one’s view of reality from the sensual (what seems real to the senses) to the spiritual (the actual and divine). As I embraced the pure spirituality taught in Christian Science, I regained my sense of wonder and joy in living.
Many blessings followed, including a happy marriage to a genuinely loving man, stepchildren, and grandchildren, whom I love dearly. Even so, I was deeply saddened by the fact that my husband and I were unable to have a child of our own. The persistent suggestion that this was the natural outcome of a sinful past was overwhelming.
These words from Science and Health urged me to go deeper in my study: “Through repentance, spiritual baptism, and regeneration, mortals put off their material beliefs and false individuality” (p. 242).
Over time, with growing humility and devotion to the teachings of Christian Science, I have found a new kind of birth taking place. It is not the birth of an infant mortal, but awakening to the “child-heart” within me; that is, an awakening to my true, spiritual identity, intact, made in the image and likeness of God, never lost. This idea of the “child-heart” is illumined in these words of William P. McKenzie’s:
Trust the Eternal, and repent in
meekness
Of that heart’s pride which frowns and
will not yield,
Then to thy child-heart shall come
strength in weakness,
And thine immortal life shall be
revealed.
(Christian Science Hymnal, No. 359)
As Job put it, “My record is on high” (Job 16:19). It does not include sin or death. To me, the child Mrs. Eddy describes in “The Cry of Christmas-tide” presents the ideal worth striving for: “Let the sentinels of Zion’s watch-towers shout once again, ‘Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.’
“In different ages the divine idea assumes different forms, according to humanity’s needs. In this age it assumes, more intelligently than ever before, the form of Christian healing. This is the babe we are to cherish. This is the babe that twines its loving arms about the neck of omnipotence, and calls forth infinite care from His loving heart” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 370).
The “child within,” which is finding new birth in me, is the desire to be a healer and share with others the glorious truth of being that man is not conceived in matter, cannot be sick or sinful, has no shameful past, and never dies.
What appeared as a tragic event, the “death” of all I held dear, was actually the seed of new beginnings that led me to seek out the true, spiritual origin of life, the Life which is God. This is so much more than a “happy ending.” It is a life-adventure that never ends.
