I’m feeling renewed gratitude for what Mrs. Eddy did in giving us the Science of Christ in our textbook, a compilation of spiritual facts and the way to apply and live according to these facts. She shows us over and over again how these spiritual facts support the law of God, which puts down the so-called law of sin and death. I am particularly grateful that my mother’s complete healing of a diagnosed spinal condition brought her to study and practice Christian Science. The healing occurred after she started reading the textbook and could not stop. Six weeks after her initial diagnosis, x-rays were taken, and the vertebrae that had disintegrated or were disintegrating in an earlier x-ray were totally restored. That was when we started going to the Christian Science church and Sunday School in our town.

Learning more about God and less about material conditions started in my teen years, when I began studying seriously Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Many demonstrations of the truth of the spiritual facts I was learning led me to trust God more and more. 

Recently I had a healing of a very uncomfortable condition that seemed very real according to material evidence. When I could not get beyond the fear and anticipation of discomfort, I asked for the help of a Christian Science practitioner. I continued to work on my own with the spiritual facts in the textbook, free of the fear and expecting healing. This statement in Science and Health was particularly helpful: “Mentally insist that harmony is the fact, and that sickness is a temporal dream. Realize the presence of health and the fact of harmonious being, until the body corresponds with the normal conditions of health and harmony” (Science and Health 412:23).

During this time, I was responsible for a number of things where I noticed I was getting very irritated. I realized I had to be more insistent that harmony is the fact, and not accept irritation of any kind. It is not of God.

One evening I was at a meeting where the temptation to get irritated and overwhelmed was pretty powerful. I refused to let anything but God lead me. Later that evening, as I was getting ready for bed – a time when the discomfort had usually come on in spades – I realized that everything was normal, the body was corresponding to the “normal conditions of health and harmony.” There was no more material-sense evidence of discord or infection. It was totally gone, and did not return.

I am grateful for yet further solid evidence that the spiritual facts, stated so clearly in our textbook, are valid and are the basis for healing prayer.