One afternoon in the middle of our son’s fourth-grade year in elementary school, I got a call from the nurse’s office to pick him up. He was feeling nauseous and his head hurt. I brought him home and stayed with him, praying for him. After we had read together that week’s Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly, he slept a bit and then woke completely free of the symptoms.
When the same thing happened at school again, I contacted a Christian Science practitioner and asked her to pray for my son. The symptoms he was experiencing quickly dissipated after the treatment, but later returned. When his trips to the nurse’s office became a regular occurrence, my husband and I asked our son some questions about what was going on in school. But he said that everything was fine. Our son was a good student who loved learning and being with his friends.
I went to the school to talk with the nurse about how my husband and I were helping our son, explaining that we were addressing this challenge through prayer. She knew that my husband and I were Christian Scientists, and she was very supportive.
Two statements from the Christian Science textbook were foundational in my prayers for our son in the months that followed: “Man is God’s reflection, needing no cultivation, but ever beautiful and complete” and “Citizens of the world, accept the ‘glorious liberty of the children of God,’ and be free! This is your divine right” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, pp. 527, 227).
It became so clear to me that our son was still the perfect and complete child that God had made. He did not need to become healthy or fearless but already was whole, free, and at peace. The practitioner, my husband, and I took a firm stand for this truth and insisted in our prayers that he had a divine right to go to school happily and without any penalty to himself.
One day only a few months from the end of the school year, our son asked if he could be home-schooled. As I prayed about whether this was the right thing for him, it occurred to me that he could be dealing with test anxiety. I knew that our understanding of our son’s innate, God-given fearlessness would bring healing. The Bible assures us, “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (II Timothy 1:7). Our son was included in this promise.
I prayed for the wisdom and strength to know what to do. It came to me that every day I should spend a little time with our son in his classroom or stay somewhere nearby in the building until he felt comfortable being dropped off at school by himself. I did this with the full support of his teacher. As soon as I began doing this, the recurring physical symptoms he had been experiencing stopped for good. Throughout the year his grades remained steady, and he got all his work done.
However, one day the principal called me to her office. She said she wanted me to have our son see the school counselor so he could be evaluated. At the time, many boys in the United States were beginning to be labeled with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder for all kinds of reasons and put on behavioral medication. I thanked the principal for the consideration and explained that we were addressing this through prayer in Christian Science. She said no more to me about it.
I remember once again being so clear that our son had a divine right to go to school freely and do all the work required of him and that nothing could interfere with that. My husband and I held to the truth that every child’s—every individual’s—identity is spiritual and governed by God, divine Mind. The only accurate label anyone can have is “child of God.”
During this time, I dealt with doubt about whether I was doing the right thing. There were days when I would leave the school and burst into tears in the car. But I knew that God was our son’s one and only Parent, and that He was always with him, guiding him every step of the way. Just as God was caring for our son, He was comforting me and guiding me to do what was right.
One night at a Wednesday testimony meeting at church, another mother mentioned how the first words to Hymn No. 139 in the Christian Science Hymnal—“I walk with Love along the way” (Minny M. H. Ayers, adapt. © CSBD)—had been so helpful to her daughter, who was having difficulty at school. The mom had adapted the words to say, “I go to school with Love [God] today” and shared them with her daughter so she would feel God’s presence with her there.
This hymn became our prayer every day. I wrote it on a piece of paper for our son to keep in his backpack. He finished his fourth-grade year with excellent grades and passed all the standardized testing required.
When the next school year started, it was as if the challenges of the previous year had never happened. He went happily off to school on his own as he had always done before the previous year. Best of all, when our son recently read this testimony to attest to its veracity, he remarked that he had never had test anxiety again, even when taking a three-day bar exam many years later to become a lawyer. Since then he has had a highly successful legal career. His healing was truly complete.
I am forever grateful for Christian Science, which has given our family a spiritual foundation on which to live and thrive.
Name Withheld
