My mother sought out Christian Science when I was in high school. One hour in a Christian Science Sunday School class was enough for me to realize that this teaching was something I wanted in my life.
Some years later, the long-cherished dream of having my own home and family was realized when a young man who had grown up attending a Christian Science Sunday School came into my life. Christian Science was the only assistance we ever turned to when problems arose in our family. It never failed to meet our need, regardless of the nature of the problem.
After almost 56 years of marriage, my dear husband passed. I had no doubt that his life was going forward, because life is in God. Still, I found myself stuck, not grieving, but thinking continually about all the good times we had shared in the past.
One day, while I was being confronted with soreness in one of my feet, it dawned on me that my life also had to go forward—that I couldn’t keep dwelling on a mortal past, even a happy one. All true goodness is from God, and is spiritual and eternal. And it was important for me to accept God’s goodness, and go forward. After this realization came, I got up out of my chair, completely free of the physical difficulty.
Shortly after Christmas of 2014, I started experiencing symptoms of a cold, which gradually worsened and developed into a serious illness. After I had prayed on my own for several days with no sign of improvement, I called a Christian Science practitioner for support.
In working with her daily for several weeks, specific errors surfaced in my thought that needed to be eliminated. The most insidious one was my sense of mortality. I had recently shared information with the executor for my will, and more than once during the past year I had made the statement to my adult children that I wouldn’t be around forever. This physical challenge had tempted me to ask, “Is this the way I am going to leave my earthly experience?”
The practitioner I worked with stated emphatically that believing in mortality is actually unchristian. She shared a statement from Unity of Good by Mary Baker Eddy that I was not familiar with: “It is unchristian to believe in the transition called material death, since matter has no life, and such misbelief must enthrone another power, an imaginary life, above the living and true God” (p. 38). That realization left the field open for healing.
One of the hymns in the Christian Science Hymnal includes these comforting words:
He knows the angels that you need,
And sends them to your side,
To comfort, guard and guide.
(Violet Hay, No. 9, © CSBD)
Mrs. Eddy defines angels in part as “God’s thoughts passing to man; spiritual intuitions, pure and perfect” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 581).
During any period of the night when I was unable to sleep, I endeavored to listen for God’s angels. I loved praying with the Lord’s Prayer and “the scientific statement of being,” from the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health (see p. 468). I was doing my best to keep thought above what the physical senses were reporting.
In daylight hours I reread the book Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer, Amplified Edition. As always, when reading about Mrs. Eddy’s life, I noted the hardships she overcame in order to share with the world her discovery of the Science behind the healing works of Christ Jesus—and to ensure its permanent availability to humanity. It was so clear to me that divine Science truly is the Comforter Christ Jesus promised the Father would send in his name.
Within a month from the time I began working with the practitioner, my strength and health returned, and along with them, an enhanced desire to make spiritual prayer and study my first priority each day. This healing also brought a noticeable softening of some character traits, including the temptation to criticize others mentally.
The sense of mortality that had engulfed me has given way to the realization of my need to follow this instruction given to us by Mrs. Eddy in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany: “Beloved Christian Scientists, keep your minds so filled with Truth and Love, that sin, disease, and death cannot enter them. It is plain that nothing can be added to the mind already full” (p. 210). I am so grateful for the patience and love expressed by the practitioner who supported me in my hours of need, and also for the loving, practical care provided by family members.
Jean Moffitt
Mission, Kansas, US
