Our occasional series on how people have nurtured their public practice of Christian Science healing.
God's timing
Everyone’s road to the Christian Science practice is different.
I once envisioned working in an art museum or art gallery as a career, or maybe following a childhood dream of becoming the director at a summer camp. But God had different plans. After I went through Christian Science Primary class instruction, I knew that the public practice would likely happen sooner in my experience than I’d anticipated. It was something that was always in my heart, but I never imagined it would come about so soon.
The summer after class instruction, I began to understand more about what the practice entailed. I was the assistant director at a Christian Science summer camp and worked closely with the camp’s practitioner and director. I witnessed many quick healings of campers and counselors and saw the example of the practitioner in how she “imbibe[d] the spirit” (Science and Health, p. 495) of Christian Science. She was graceful, humble, loving, and joyous. I often asked her questions and learned by her example.
When I asked “how do you know it’s time” to make the Christian Science practice a career, she always turned me to my Bible so I’d know how God was directing me. She also often quoted Mary Baker Eddy by saying with a smile, “divine Love alone governs man” (Church Manual, p. 40). So I knew the timing of it all wasn’t something I needed to outline. It would happen at the right time and in God’s perfect way. Later, I realized that the summer had prepared me for an important next step.
In the fall, I returned to work at a museum with plans to begin a graduate program in Museum Studies. The desire to be a Christian Science practitioner was burning in my heart, and it wasn’t long after I left camp that I began receiving calls for prayerful help and making praying for others a priority. Then I found myself asking more seriously: What do I really want to devote my life to? What is it that God needs me to do? I had to be willing to obey His direction, wherever it led me.
I continued praying diligently, constantly turning to God for guidance. Mrs. Eddy’s encouragement that “Love inspires, illumines, designates, and leads the way” (Science and Health, p. 454) was a comforting help. To me, this statement revealed a specific order of how events unfold when human will is silenced and “. . . Love is at the helm . . .” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 113). I often opened my Bible for direction and the answers were clear. Everything I turned to was pointing me to the full-time practice of Christian Science. Even though it meant turning down graduate school and leaving my job, I knew that if I was obedient to God’s will, every need would be supplied.
Some other powerful statements I read were from a letter Mrs. Eddy wrote to a young student of Christian Science, James Neal. In it she describes the qualities of a healer and writes, “Oh may the Love that looks on you and all guide your every thought and act up to the impersonal, spiritual model that is the only ideal—and constitutes the only scientific Healer.
“To this glorious end I ask you to still press on, and have no other ambition or aim” (L03524, January 29, 1897, The Mary Baker Eddy Collection, The Mary Baker Eddy Library).
After I left my job at the museum, a remarkable thing happened. It was my first week of being in the full-time practice and, as I was praying and studying in the morning, the phone rang. And almost each day that week I had a new case. I soon realized that it wasn’t about how young or old I was, it was about the healing results, and knowing that divine Mind did the healing work. Nine months later, I applied for listing in The Christian Science Journal.
By trusting in God to lead me, and knowing that I can be moved only by divine Mind, my experience echoed this statement from Science and Health, “Spirit, God, gathers unformed thoughts into their proper channels, and unfolds these thoughts, even as He opens the petals of a holy purpose in order that the purpose may appear” (p. 506). God was certainly “gathering unformed thoughts” every step of the way, until His guidance became so clear that I could not ignore it.
