When our second daughter, Sarah, was about three years old, she awoke one night crying and carrying on at the top of her volume capabilities. My wife and I and our then three children were staying at my dad’s house, and the crying was enough to waken everyone.
I very quickly called my Christian Science teacher and requested prayerful treatment for my daughter. Nothing seemed to change in Sarah’s discomfort level, and her crying continued unabated. However, my wife and I became aware that the claim was pin worms, having visual confirmation. I was on the phone with my teacher a couple more times, since there had been no letup of the crying.
We continued praying, affirming that “a spiritual idea has not a single element of error, and this truth removes properly whatever is offensive” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 463). As I prayed, it came to me that years before, when I was an officer in the Navy, a corpsman had told me that the remedy for pin worms is to basically give the patient something that flushes everything out. As this memory surfaced, I saw at once the error of this latent belief that any real and lasting healing can be gained through material means. We wanted to do whatever we could to comfort our child, and I realized that the most effective thing I could do was acknowledge that God was present and able to help. God’s help was more than sufficient in this situation and could meet my daughter’s need for healing.
