WHEN THE SUNDAY SCHOOL CLASS I teach decided to study each of the Ten Commandments this year, I began to view them as spiritual solutions to my 21st-century life.

My husband, Shawn, and I live in New York City with our two children. Our son, Odie, is two and a half, and our daughter, Honey, is one year old. Shawn is in a full-time master of fine arts program and spends his evenings and weekends painting portraits. I'm primarily at home with the children, while also doing freelance work and developing my own career. While our life may not seem to have much in common with Mosaic law, Moses and the Ten Commandments are definitely at work here! In fact, a recent experience in our family has proved to me that the spiritual essence of the Commandments as taught in Christian Science makes them my essential parenting guide.

As for so many families with young children, sleep became an issue for our daughter recently. She was waking up regularly in the wee hours of the morning, violently crying and not at all content to play quietly until daylight.

At first, my husband and I tried to think of it as a good time to pray and prepare for the day ahead. But Honey demanded so much attention and made so much noise that it was hard for us to do anything else but feel tired, anxious, and confused. In addition to keeping her from disturbing her brother, we were trying to be sensitive to our landlady downstairs and our neighbor in the adjoining apartment. On top of that, my husband was often the one to retrieve Honey and settle her down, even though he'd gone to bed just a few hours earlier. Despite both of our concerted efforts to soothe her, these early-morning disturbances soon turned into a relentless pattern.

Then, Shawn remembered we could lean on God for a solution. Not that we didn't know this. But our efforts had been more about pleading for sleep than praying, as we sang muffled and very weary renditions of the hymn "O gentle presence" in those dark morning hours (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 207). Shawn later told me that as he leaned on God, he started really "waking up" in the spiritual sense, and letting go of all the responsibility he had been shouldering as a father, husband, and artist. Rather than wait for our daughter to grow out of some excruciating stage, he decided to take the initiative to focus on God's view of our family as always harmonious and peaceful and calm.

As Mary Baker Eddy's words to the hymn we sang emphasize, God is the very "gentle presence" we customarily saw expressed in our home environment, full of "peace and joy and power." He is the "Life divine, that owns each waiting hour." Soon, Shawn said he stopped feeling willful about quieting Honey and even about how much sleep he got.

For a while, Honey continued to wake up early crying. Of course we comforted her. But now we both met those moments with the spiritual confidence that comes from understanding God's supremacy. Shawn referred to it as "being a witness" to her spiritual nature. That reminded me of the Ninth Commandment in the Bible: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour" (Ex. 20:16). In my own prayers, I realized I could see my daughter as my neighbor, too. And the most neighborly—and motherly—thing to do was to see her the way God saw both of us, as naturally harmonious, satisfied, and peaceful.

I also appreciated thinking of this commandment in relation to my neighbors in the city. By affirming that God's spiritual harmony is always as present as God is, I was staking a claim for a peaceful atmosphere in my physical environment all around me.

Within a few weeks of our prayers, Honey's sleeping habits normalized, and she stopped waking up so early. In fact, the whole family began sleeping better. Ever since then, the Ninth Commandment has been foremost in my thought. I've been applying its lessons as a parenting technique, as well as when praying about situations beyond our home. Everywhere I turn, there are opportunities to tell the truth about my neighbors—about colleagues, friends, acquaintances, and, of course, my own children. CSS