Question 1: Share a physical healing or healings in which reading one or more of Skip’s articles played an important part in your own spiritual study and prayer and ultimate healing.

A few years ago, I received news that my father was very ill and wasn't expected to live much longer. He was receiving medical treatment and the family was sharing time with him around the clock. This situation presented quite a dilemma, because I had been estranged from my family for many years. Although my siblings and I were raised in Christian Science, I am the only one who continued with it. Because of abuse by my mother and my family’s hatred of my devotion to God, I had been unable to have any kind of relationship with my parents or siblings. So I had to leave them all and start over in another city.

After receiving the news about my dad, my heart was broken. I began to doubt the decision I had made to leave them. Did my decision contribute to his illness? How could I go back there after having grown out of that experience? If I did go back, how would I be received? I felt that I must have let my dad down. But I had prayed each step of the way before leaving, and God had shown me so many things that I needed to see. How could God be wrong? 

With my thoughts swirling, I began to feel the symptoms of a heart attack. Shortness of breath and extreme pain in my chest made it difficult for me to stand. I knew I needed to see more of God as my Father. 

In Skip’s article “Unselfing—strength to build and rebuild for the ages” (Journal, October 2015), he refers to testimonies from decades ago that he found online, saying, “Powerful healings like these were so obviously valid and real and frequent, they were enough in themselves to develop a new momentum—new spiritual experiences shared throughout a family, news of healing traveling from neighbor to neighbor. Wednesday evening testimony meetings with people waiting to be next to speak of current healings. Naturally, all this produced joy, growth, and a stirring sense of fresh possibilities.” Skip’s statement reminded me of the most important reason for leaving my family—to be free to live and to have the ability to support a Cause that heals.

Skip continues, “Yet the woman who discovered and founded Christian Science explained that something more would be needed if these substantial demonstrations of divine Love were to continue. That something would require not being drawn back constantly after healing to an imagined home base of material existence, with its self or personhood in matter.” This was it: I couldn’t be drawn back into that material experience. No matter what was enticing me to feel sorry or guilty, I had to hear God’s will for me and my dad. 

Skip writes further, “Joseph Mann, who had been healed by a Christian Scientist as he was dying of a gunshot wound, recalled Mary Baker Eddy saying years afterward to him: ‘You have had a wonderful experience. You were thrown violently out of the house [the mind-set that thinks it’s living in matter] and picked yourself up outside; go not back into the house’ (We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Expanded Edition, Vol. II, p. 161).” This, too, was it! I knew I couldn’t go back!

The pain continued to get worse. I was the only person at home, yet I knew I wasn’t alone because God was with me. He had always been with me and He wasn’t going to leave me now. I continued to reach out to God and put down the fear that was trying to take hold. I was also receiving support from a Christian Science practitioner, who told me that I only have a heart of love and that heart is filled with the love from God. I began to feel a calmness and a strength in this knowing. 

The pain didn’t subside quickly, but I kept holding to the fact that I belonged to God and His love for me. I began to feel a wonderful peace and the pain began to lift. I could breathe without struggling and fear of the pain ceased. I was able to climb the two flights of stairs to my bedroom without difficulty.  

As for the family situation, the lie of guilt left. I knew God as my Father-Mother and that is all I needed to know. I took comfort in knowing it for my parents and siblings, too. Afterward, it took some time for me to completely release the past with my family, but I found my way to this release by wholly trusting in God. Now and then, the temptation to ruminate comes to me, but I put it out where it belongs, for I know that God led me then and He continues to lead me now. God doesn’t make mistakes.