More than forty years ago I...

Gladys Garvin Shatts

More than forty years ago I turned to Christian Science when life seemed not worth living and received an instantaneous healing of unhappiness and attendant illness. I had known of Christian Science for years through a sister who was an earnest student of it and who became a practitioner. However, until my little world seemed to crumble, my attitude toward Science was that of amused tolerance. When, in my extremity, I asked my sister for help, she, knowing my former attitude, said, "If you have faith enough to ask me for help, you have faith enough to be healed."

That night I had my first normal sleep in months and awoke with a sense of buoyancy and a feeling that the whole world had been made over. I said to my sister, "I don't want just to be healed; I want to know how I'm healed." That day I began the study of Christian Science, and through the years continued study has brought to me and to my family continued blessings.

Our five children have all been blessed, guided, protected, and healed many times when they have applied the truths learned at home and in a Christian Science Sunday School. So-called children's diseases touched them lightly. On one occasion the youngest child manifested whooping cough. In obedience to the state law, I called the health officer and reported the condition.

He did not come to the house but asked about the other children. When told they had not had the illness he said, "Of course they'll get it and you'll have to keep them out of school." Asked what date they could go back if they did not get it, he gave a date when it would be safe. That date passed without any of the other children having the least symptoms, and the girl herself was quickly healed.

The practitioner who was helping said she thought of the words of the first four lines of the poem "Love" by Mrs. Eddy, which read (Poems, p. 6),

Brood o'er us with Thy shelt'ring wing,
'Neath which our spirits blend
Like brother birds, that soar and sing,
And on the same branch bend.

She thought of the children as "brother birds," the offspring of divine Love, who could give only good to each other.

Membership in The Mother Church and in a branch church has been rewarding. Serving in various capacities in church work has brought not only much happiness but also a form of discipline I needed. Class instruction opened new vistas of spiritual understanding.

I am very grateful for the superb courage of Mrs. Eddy, God's messenger to this age, for her faithful adherence to Principle, her persistence in following the leadings of divine Mind in the face of untold opposition, and her wise founding of the Christian Science movement, with its many channels for spreading the truth of man's relationship to God.—(Mrs.) Gladys Garvin Shatts, St. Louis, Missouri.

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