Testimony of Healing February 13, 2012 Issue

Timely birth and quick healing

Linda Opdenweyer Lewis

When I was expecting our second child a number of years ago, I began praying with a Christian Science practitioner in preparation for the birth. I planned to have an obstetrician perform the delivery in his clinic, but was concerned that he would be out delivering another baby when the time came that I would need him. When I told the practitioner my concerns about the timing, she responded, “Nothing is timed in the kingdom of heaven. Everything is timely.” I held to this thought for the next several months, and I felt at peace knowing everything would be timely.

Two weeks before the baby was due, the contractions started. After calling the doctor, I opened Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896 by Mary Baker Eddy and read this sentence: “This Mind, then, is not subject to growth, change, or diminution, but is the divine intelligence, or Principle, of all real being; holding man forever in the rhythmic round of unfolding bliss, as a living witness to and perpetual idea of inexhaustible good” (pp. 82–83). My thought focused on the phrase, “the rhythmic round of unfolding bliss.” I knew that God was guiding the birth, and that nothing could disrupt the perfect timeliness of God’s ideas.

Later that evening, I called to tell the doctor I was heading to the clinic. His wife answered the phone and said she would let him know. (This was before cellphones. I found out later that the doctor had been out at the time—his office had closed for the day—and his wife told me she’d prayed about it and that divine inspiration enabled her to reach him at another patient’s house! She gave credit to the concept of God as one Mind, something she’d learned from other Christian Scientists who’d been patients of her husband.) We arrived at the clinic about half an hour later, and the doctor walked in just as we drove up.

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