Testimony of Healing December 8, 1980 Issue

An oppressive mental trial came into my life about ten years..

LIEBER ANKER

An oppressive mental trial came into my life about ten years ago. For a long time I had accepted the notion that I must carry a small part of the world on my shoulders. This world included a profession that I believed kept me tied to it day and night, plus the chores of a home and the care of parents. Some time after my mother's passing, my father became ill and required much attention. However, despite the rather gloomy and prolonged situation, I still fulfilled what I considered to be my duties as a Christian Scientist—praying daily as best I could, and being very active in a branch church. But somehow I let clouds overshadow my understanding of God's love for me—clouds of false responsibility, anxiety, fear, and a general feeling of limitation and lack.

The result was a sudden mental breakdown. This took me away from my position, home, and church. Over a period of perhaps three years, I found myself in hospitals, a nursing home for Christian Scientists, and private homes of Scientists who helped me in my return to mental stability. During these years, at various times I had the help of loving Christian Science practitioners. Even though, for a long while, I was unable to live in a normal manner, I still read the Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly daily. I recognized that this lesson could be a real aid to healing, and I valued it along with the spiritual support of the numerous fellow Scientists who kept in touch with me. These friends voiced many constructive thoughts in letters and during visits, although I seemed unable to retain the thoughts beyond the time they were expressed.

Finally, in the fourth year I regained my mental freedom. After my release from the final hospitalization, I was required to report to a psychiatrist for a while, but soon this bondage ceased as well. The psychiatrist understood, in some measure, how Christian Science works; and in time she acknowledged that my release was the only one she knew of that was complete and permanent, free from periodic returns to mental wards of hospitals and psychiatric attention.

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