Grateful for early blessings

I have never known life without wonderful Christian Science. 

One of my earliest memories is of when I was in grade school, several decades ago. I was happily playing dodge ball when the principal pulled me aside and told me I had to go home because I had the mumps. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but he saw evidence of this disease and he sent me walking home. 

Once home, my mother, a class-taught Christian Scientist, was surprised and asked me why I wasn’t in school. I told her the principal had sent me home because he said I had the mumps. She asked if I felt sick. I said no. She knew God made me well, but she also knew we needed to pray and expect healing from any appearance of illness. 

She sat me down on the divan and gave me the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. She asked me to memorize “the scientific statement of being” found on page 468 . It begins: “There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all.” I thought my mother was being very demanding because the statement had big words, but I trusted that she was helping me, and I really wanted to return to school, so I went over it and over it. I know now that she was praying and thinking about the meaning behind those words.

It took me quite a while to memorize it, but when I was through, my mother could see that the physical evidence of mumps was gone. I can’t remember if I returned to school that afternoon or the next day, but I remember that my teacher was the principal’s wife and she could tell I was A-OK and let me back into class. I knew I had been healed by Christian Science, and this healing made it known from that point on that our family were Christian Scientists, who relied on prayer for healing.

Later on, that memorization was effective when I was away from home without my mother to lean on. I was a young teen and at Girl Scout camp when, while swimming in the Illinois River, I experienced severe cramps that bent me over double. I got out of the river and went about 300 to 400 yards away to a fallen tree and sat on it and began reciting “the scientific statement of being.” The pain was intense, so at first I was just saying words. Then I began to realize what I was saying. “The scientific statement of being” ends with: “Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual.” I knew this was referring to both men and women, and that I was included in this powerful affirmation.

The words came alive to me as I realized my true being was spiritual. My situation was put into perspective with this realization, and there was no more pain. I was completely healed of those cramps, and I never feared them recurring. I swam the next day, and even swam three miles down that same river later that summer. I’ve never had any kind of abdominal cramps again, even to this day, many decades later. All my life, Christian Science has been a panacea, a remedy for all difficulties (see Science and Health, p. 407 ), and for this I am exceedingly grateful.

Barbara Ann Johnson
South Pasadena, California, US