Testimony of Healing May 18, 1940 Issue

Some years ago I was troubled with insomnia

Blanch Battee Wise

Some years ago I was troubled with insomnia. For several nights I was restless and could not sleep. I became worried for fear I should lose my position, for I thought if I could not sleep I could not work. But the third night I decided not to think of sleep. I prepared for the night by getting out the Bible, all Mrs. Eddy's works, and the Concordances, and I studied all night.

I first looked up the word "sleep." In her Message to The Mother Church for 1902 (p. 17) Mrs. Eddy says, "Many sleep who should keep themselves awake and waken the world." She also connects sleep with apathy and mesmerism (Science and Health, pp. 249, 490), and in a poem (Poems, p. 65), she refers to it as "twin sister of death." So, I thought, what difference does it make about so much sleep?

I continued night after night in study for over a year. Sometimes just before daylight I would close my eyes a little while. One morning someone said to me, "I don't see how you can come out looking so fresh when I see your light on all night." In "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 209), Mrs. Eddy says, "Insomnia compels mortals to learn that neither oblivion nor dreams can recuperate the life of man, whose Life is God, for God neither slumbers nor sleeps."

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