Article November 25, 2013 Issue

Gratitude and the healing of cancer

Pamela Herzer

I was a mother of young children when I began to experience some alarming symptoms. Although I was a student of Christian Science, I was so overcome with fear that I was inconsistent in praying for healing and decided to seek a medical diagnosis. After testing, the doctors informed me that I had cervical cancer. Since my husband’s first wife had passed on from this same disease, I felt my life was over, and I sank into a deep, dark depression.

The doctors moved me through the initial medical procedures and surgeries very quickly because of their fear. Afterward they told me, “We’re sorry to say that the cancer has spread, but we’ll do the best we can to treat it.” Though they insisted that radiation and chemotherapy were necessary, they never said these treatments were expected to cure me. I underwent six weeks of radiation, then received a phone call urging me to get started on the chemotherapy as soon as possible.

It was at that point that I reconsidered my course. Mary Baker Eddy’s words from page 322 of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures came to mind: “The sharp experiences of belief in the supposititious life of matter, as well as our disappointments and ceaseless woes, turn us like tired children to the arms of divine Love. Then we begin to learn Life in divine Science.” I saw that my life, as I knew it, was over, and that I must embark on a new life and a new way of thinking. This meant weeding out old, outmoded thoughts based on a material sense of myself, and aligning my thinking to what God knows about me as His child.

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