Testimony of Healing November 21, 1936 Issue

Looking back over the years since I turned to Christian Science...

Bertha Byford

Looking back over the years since I turned to Christian Science for help, I see a transformation that calls for boundless gratitude. Christian Science has gently weaned me from a desperate sense of fear and dread and led me to quiet, confident trust in God. Years ago my mental state was such that I could not enter or stay in a house alone, nor could I stay in a room alone without experiencing physical suffering, even though other rooms of the same house were occupied by friends. I can gratefully say that Christian Science has enabled me to stay "in quietness and in confidence" where human opinion said it was neither wise nor safe to be. On page 167 of "Miscellaneous Writings" are statements which have greatly helped me. There Mrs. Eddy speaks of "the reappearing of the infantile thought of God's man." As I reached out for an assurance of the love which is free from fear, I had a beautiful glimpse of childlike confidence in the actual presence of good, and realized a little the infant purity of thought which depends on one Parent, our Father-Mother God. The statements that the spiritual idea "is wholly symmetrical," and "both son and daughter," left no room for deformity, but showed me something of woman reflecting the qualities of courage usually attributed to man and, vice versa, man radiating the tenderness and intuition usually associated with woman. This truth is an unfailing friend to me.

Soon after coming to Christian Science I experienced a beautiful healing of the effects of hatred. I was suffering acutely from swollen glands, and a practitioner who was helping me asked if anyone hated me. I emphatically replied, "Of course I am hated; you know I am!" I thought that gentle practitioner stupid to ask such a question when hatred seemed so obvious. I do not know what words she used, but I do know that such a clear concept of omnipresent Love was given to me that I saw clearly there was nothing to the hatred but what I believed of it. God's child could only recognize Love. A burden of years was lifted; I was as free as a little child, and when, a few hours later, a friend offered to continue what had been necessary help for the suffering condition, I was surprised, and, putting my hands up to my neck and head, found myself quite well.

A distressing sense of homelessness was healed when it was pointed out to me that my home is in Mind, God; therefore, I am always at home. On another occasion, acute appendicitis was instantaneously healed through the loving work of a practitioner. About ten years ago, when suffering from what the medical faculty term an incurable condition, I was healed by a most patient Christian Science practitioner. As humility took the place of self-will, the healing was made manifest.

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