Testimony of Healing March 30, 1998 Issue

Extreme fear overcome

Claire Shillito

During Primary class instruction in Christian Science, I heard of someone who, while overcoming many problems, learnt to drive a car, and of the freedom and joy this brought not only to that one but to many others, too. I was very impressed by this; it held my attention. But it seemed there were unsurmountable difficulties in the way of my learning to drive once again. After considerable thought, I mentioned this difficulty to my Christian Science teacher, who very kindly said she would be happy to give me Christian Science treatment, if I wished, as I went forward with the idea of re-learning to drive.

I had passed a driving test in my late teens, but had been so filled with fear that I drove very little after that. After I married a few years later, once we were able to have a car I let my husband do all the driving for about the next twenty years.

When I told my husband and family that I was contemplating taking professional driving lessons so that I could be of use in that way, they were very encouraging. My teacher very patiently helped me to cast out fear. In Science and Health, next to the marginal note "No fleshly heredity" is a paragraph that was very helpful to me, particularly the lines "... but if we learn that nothing is real but the right, we shall have no dangerous inheritances, and fleshly ills will disappear" (p. 228). I prayed, too, with the Bible passage from Isaiah "And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness" (35:8). I also liked the idea a friend of mine had about thinking of Love as the vehicle, Truth as the way, and Mind as the operator. I knew, too, that God has no favoured sons, and that He is everywhere present. I held to these ideas.