Testimony of Healing January 28, 1928 Issue

All my life, from childhood, I have wanted to understand...

Gertrude E. Lyon

All my life, from childhood, I have wanted to understand about God and man. I was confirmed, directly I was old enough, as a member of the Church of England; but, frankly, its teachings puzzled me. I believed that God had made me just as I appeared, sometimes good, sometimes otherwise; and after endless reasoning with myself, I decided that I really could not help anything—God had made me so. I could not reconcile sickness, poverty, wickedness, and all the suffering in the world, from whatever cause, with a God of love. I thought that the only way out of all the difficulties was to die; but I had no desire to die, I wanted to live, but under different conditions.

At the beginning of the year 1907 I became seriously ill, and was taken to a hospital, where I underwent three major operations and one minor one for an internal growth, which the most eminent surgeons in that city said was too large to remove. I lay flat on my back for six months. I was then allowed to get up; and after fifty-three weeks in all, of great kindness on the part of all at the hospital, I returned home much better than when I went in, but with a discharging wound, which had to be surgically dressed every day. In 1918 I went for a summer holiday, at the end of which I came home in great pain. It was at this crisis I remembered that an aunt had mentioned Christian Science to me on one or two occasions, but I knew nothing of its teachings. I wrote to her, and got in touch with a practitioner. Full of fear, I decided to have Christian Science treatment; but as I had previously made an appointment with the surgeon who had operated on me in the earlier years, I first went to see him. He gave me no hope; said the chances that the wound would ever heal were almost nil; told me very gently that he could do nothing further for me, that it was a most curious case, and one that was very rare in the surgical world; that all I could look forward to in the future were periodical breakdowns, and that I must consider it remarkable that I was alive at all. I came away knowing definitely that the medical profession could offer me nothing more. Treatment in Christian Science was then commenced. At the end of six weeks I was able to return to business, although I was not physically healed. I, however, now had a "reason of the hope" that was in me.

For three years longer the difficulty seemed to hold me. I was never free from pain. I clung, however, to the truth, reading nothing but the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, and the other writings of our Leader, together with the authorized literature; but had it not been for the great love and untiring patience and ceaseless prayer of the dear practitioner, who encouraged and guided me, I could not have endured the battle. I had indeed to seek "first the kingdom of God," but the reward has been a hundredfold.

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