Testimony of Healing August 6, 1984 Issue

My first healing in Christian Science was of...

GUY HALFERTY with contributions from PHYLLIS HALFERTY

My first healing in Christian Science was of mental depression, and it took place while I was in my mid-twenties. After several years of struggling against a constant barrage of nightmarish suggestions, I had become quite discouraged and panicstricken. Gloom and melancholy were my constant jailers. I was terrified that I was going to become insane. More than once I considered suicide.

I had been a regular pupil in a Christian Science Sunday School but had never really studied Science. Now, however, I began earnestly reaching out to God; I longed to be healed. Hungrily I studied the Bible and Mary Baker Eddy's writings. My pockets were always stuffed with dog-eared copies of articles from the Christian Science periodicals. I was literally trying to live Paul's Biblical injunction "Pray without ceasing" (I Thess. 5:17). Still, I felt little progress had been made. The way seemed dark indeed.

During this time I had an occasion to consider more deeply this statement in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany by Mrs. Eddy (p. 213): "Unless one's eyes are opened to the modes of mental malpractice, working so subtly that we mistake its suggestions for the impulses of our own thought, the victim will allow himself to drift in the wrong direction without knowing it." After I had pondered this passage, there was a sudden and joyous awakening. I began to understand for the first time how aggressive mental suggestion claims to work in the first person—using the pronouns I, me, my, and mine for its lies. And I saw how the aggressive, invading suggestions of the carnal mind had been running amok in my mental home, masquerading as my own thoughts.

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