Testimony of Healing March 28, 1994 Issue

After two years in the second grade, I still could not read...

Kathryn Lee Hoyt

After two years in the second grade, I still could not read or write. I continued on through elementary school, lost in a system that did nothing to help me overcome my limitations. I always felt like the dunce of the class, the one who would never know the answer.

By the time high school came along, I had somehow learned to cover up my awful grades. But school and learning were never easy, and certainly never enjoyable. I always felt inadequate and unable to remember what I was learning, to the degree that, at exam time, terror would overtake me and I would do a poor job. My parents and I had prayed about my many difficulties together. I realize now that they prayed for me every day. My mother and I would take Bible verses or sentences from Science and Health and write them on note cards, which I would carry with me to school. At one very desperate moment I remember her telling me, "... drop [your] burden at His feet,/ And bear a song away" (Hymnal, No. 124). I felt inspired when I glimpsed how close God was to me, and that as infinite Mind He was always there for me to express. Another hymn I treasured begins, "I love Thy way of freedom, Lord,/To serve Thee is my choice" (No. 136). I tried to "take God" with me to school each day, and to declare that no limitation, no matter what the label, could possibly stick, because my ability was reflected of God, who knows no limits.

I knew the healing was complete two years after college, when I found myself reading thousand-page books with delight. Previously, I never voluntarily read a book, and just opening a textbook caused a paralyzing fear. Now my greatest joy is to delve into books and to learn.

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