Article December 22, 1917 Issue

A Mother's Experience

ELSA H. SCHREIBER

Since I am only one of the thousands of mothers who have been called upon to part with their sons in the recent sweeping selective draft, my experience has no doubt been duplicated in many homes in the United States of America. All thought or talk of war had been studiously shut out of our home circle for many years. As long ago as the Boer War I remember patting my boy's curly head and thinking that he would never see war, for the world was surely growing better year by year. I had such a safe feeling.

The years rolled by and all education was carried on always with a peaceful future in mind. The events of the past few years have been piling up ever more formidably, until we find ourselves swept into the maelstrom of the world war. I wakened one morning to know that my boy, now a strong man, came into the first quota of the selective draft. Here was a task for a Christian Science mother that required "prayer and fasting," a complete readjustment of a lifetime of thinking and living. As I look back to those days of struggle, a great sense of thankfulness fills me, that I had learned through the teachings of Christian Science to work things out according to God's law.

First of all the sense of personal ownership had to be disposed of. The boy never did belong to me, for God is the only Father-Mother of us all. The sense of separation was the next deep water that had to be crossed. With God as his Father-Mother, where could he go but in his Father's kingdom where all is well! At this place in my mental adjustment the Lord's Prayer with the spiritual interpretation as given by Mrs. Eddy on pages 16 and 17 of Science and Health gave me untold solace and comfort, and the "grace for to-day" was forthcoming. Thoughts of self-pity and fear of the future were faced and put to rout, and by the time the hour of parting arrived the chasm of fear and separation was bridged and a feeling of safety and calm prevailed.

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