Christian Science was the only religion taught and practiced in my family with five siblings. We lived in the Territory of Hawaii, on the island of Hawaii, and had an active Christian Science Society.
When I was sixteen, one of my legs became paralyzed, and I remained immobile and bedridden for several weeks during the summer. Our housekeeper cared for me during the day while my mom worked downtown as the full-time Christian Science Reading Room librarian. We asked a Christian Science practitioner in Honolulu for help through prayer. The only way to communicate with her at that time was by letter, which could be sent by boat twice a week.
When Mom came home from work, she cared for me and daily read the weekly Bible Lesson to me from our Christian Science Pastor, the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. When she arrived home one day she said: “Here, you like biographies. Read this book by Sybil Wilbur about Mary Baker Eddy.”
From the very beginning I loved the biography. My thoughts were engaged with Mrs. Eddy’s spiritual search, which began from her early childhood within a very religious family. I appreciated her mother’s deep love for God and a brother’s interest in advancing her education. Her life inspired me. She searched the Bible for answers as to how the healing works of Jesus took place. Through biblical study, divine revelation, and practical proof in her own life, she came to see that the one God is entirely good and made man perfect in His image. She realized that He is infinite, always present, and that nothing unlike His good nature has genuine reality.
After finishing the book, I felt impelled to get out of bed and walk across the bedroom—and immediately I did so. I drove the car the next day, and attended Sunday School and the church service the following Sunday. I did not question the healing or wonder how it happened, but my thought was clearly touched by the power of Christ, Truth, through the practitioner’s help and in reading of Mrs. Eddy’s experience. With gratitude I did what was normal and natural—I walked.
A cousin of one of the founding members of our Christian Science Society had stopped attending church. When she saw me healed, she resumed attending and said, “I don’t have to see another healing. Christian Science is for me.”
This experience set the foundation for many, many healing proofs of God’s loving care throughout the following years.
Later, when I was married, we lived in the High Sierra of northeastern California along the shore of a large man-made lake. My husband was a teacher, and I was a watercolor artist. We had built a studio for art workshops, classes, and a gallery.
One late October day the weather turned very cold. Winds blew. I was working alone in my studio when my husband dashed in and said: “I am going to take one more sail before I store the boats for the winter. I’ll be home before dark for dinner.” Engrossed in my work, I said “OK” without missing a brush stroke. My husband was a strong swimmer and an excellent sailor.
As evening approached, I walked across the lawn to the house to make dinner. My husband was not at home. I walked to the beach to look for him. No one was in sight, and the wind was whipping up into a fierce storm.
Disappointed, I returned to the house, telephoned the sheriff’s office, and asked them to have their boat patrol search for him. “Sorry, ma’am. We’ve put our boats away for the winter,” was their reply.
I telephoned a Christian Science practitioner for prayerful support and blurted out, “I don’t know where he is!” “But God does,” she quietly replied.
After we talked, I started reading the week’s Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly, looking for words of comfort. The first biblical citation was, “In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust: let me never be put to confusion” (Psalms 71:1). Another reference reminded me that God, divine Love, always meets our needs. And words from a hymn added assurance of our Father’s presence: “Year by year, Thy hand hath brought us / On through dangers oft unknown” (John M. Neale, Christian Science Hymnal, No. 115, adapt.).
I asked friends to drive down the highway and scan the lake and beach for my husband. I felt the need to stay home to be still and pray.
Shortly after they left, I looked up and saw my soaking wet husband walking down from the highway to our house.
He told me that he had sailed to the north. Zipping along in the strong south wind, he decided to return home. Unfortunately, with the strong wind and rough water, the boat “turtled” and tossed him into the turbulence under an upside-down boat. He was not wearing a life jacket, and though he managed to get out from under the boat, he wasn’t able to turn it right side up. He was two hundred feet from the shore, and the only alternative would have been to swim to shore in the icy rough water.
He prayed for direction. When he looked up, he saw a man walking along the beach. My husband got his attention. In no time the man came in a rowboat to get him.
He told my husband, “I absolutely never go walking on the beach during this time of the year, and I do not know who owns this rowboat.” Upon reaching the shore, he went up the hill to his house, got his car, and drove my husband home.
My husband went to retrieve his sailboat in the morning, but it was nowhere in sight. He and I prayed.
In mid-afternoon a call came from a marina over three miles away. They had found his boat floating upside down outside their harbor. Apparently the winds had changed direction, and those offshore winds pushed the boat three miles across the lake to the resort, where retrieval was simplified with their equipment.
Our understanding of God’s loving, constant care grew as we gratefully acknowledged that “divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need” (Science and Health, p. 494).
Patricia L. Kurtz
Kailua Kona, Hawaii, US
