Article June 11, 2012 Issue

Life lessons

Janet Cowgill Distel

It was early morning when the phone rang. I could hear my husband answering, but could not imagine whom he was talking to or make out exactly what he was saying. He hung up and came to give me the news. “Your mom passed on,” he said.

This is how my journey to understand eternal life began. As a young mother with a two-year-old daughter, I did not know where to begin. In the midst of making the arrangements for my mother’s memorial service, I called my Christian Science teacher. When I told him of my mom’s passing, he spoke very lovingly, with great compassion, and shared that my mom undoubtedly learned so much through this experience. At first, I did not understand this at all, but another practitioner said later that of course my mom had “learned so much”—she had learned that there is no death! She had learned that whatever had seemed to take her life was powerless, because she was still going forward, progressing spiritually. She hadn’t come to an end!

This was a great comfort to me, but still I felt I needed to go deeper spiritually to really understand. My dear husband did so much to help. He would meet our daughter and me for dinner on Wednesday nights after he was finished with work and then take her to a park so that I could have a quiet hour or two in the Christian Science Reading Room before the evening testimony meeting at church. During that time, I read many articles on the topic of life in the bound volumes of the Christian Science periodicals and every citation on God as Life in the Bible and Mary Baker Eddy’s writings. Each week, as ideas about eternal life were unfolding to me, the grief was lifting.

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