Article January 26, 2004 Issue

Receptive hearts and hearts healed

By Janet Clements

A paean of praise to the dear lady who saw my mother as a receptive heart! She didn't really know my mom, who had just finished college in a small Iowa town and moved to Chicago to start a new job. But a day after offering her a room for rent in her home, this woman invited my mom to a church service and shared with her a copy of the book that was read as part of the sermon, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.

This woman was unaware that my mother had been diagnosed with an enlarged heart, thought to be the effect of numerous childhood illnesses. My mother's doctors had told her she would have to take a year off from school and be medicated for the rest of her life. They also said she would have to live a quiet life, free of physical exertion.

Mom took the heart medication for several years, but when she graduated from the university, she felt intuitively that there was a better way to handle her health problems. Having attended church as a child, she had always believed in God, but didn't know much about how prayer could heal. However, before she moved to Chicago, she recalled having "a little talk with God." She told Him that she didn't want to live a life enslaved, and that no matter what the medical verdict was, she wasn't taking any more pills.