Testimony of Healing April 25, 2016 Issue

Harmonious childbirth

Carole Jackson Poindexter

When I was pregnant with our second child, we called a Christian Science practitioner for prayerful support. She helped us prepare for the birth by countering material beliefs surrounding pregnancy and childbirth with spiritual facts, which we learned and practiced through a sincere study of the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy. My husband and I studied to learn more about the true nature of man as God’s image and likeness, and we welcomed the opportunity for continued spiritual growth resulting from our expanding family.

Rather than seeing a doctor, we decided to engage the services of a midwife. During the pregnancy there was no need expressed by the midwife for vitamins, medication, or sonograms. At one routine visit to the midwife, she indicated that my blood count was not right. Medication was prescribed, but based on our long experience with Christian Science healing, we did not fill the prescription. Instead, we contacted the practitioner for treatment through prayer. She emphatically declared that God was the Father and Mother of the child and that, as stated in Science and Health, “Man is not matter; he is not made up of brain, blood, bones, and other material elements” (p. 475). At my next visit, the blood count was normal.

A week before my son was born, a close cousin gave birth to a baby girl. A complication came up during the birth, and the baby was delivered by cesarean section. As soon as we learned of this, I began to pray immediately, and specifically with an idea in the chapter “Marriage” in Science and Health: “In Science man is the offspring of Spirit. The beautiful, good, and pure constitute his ancestry. His origin is not, like that of mortals, in brute instinct, nor does he pass through material conditions prior to reaching intelligence” (p. 63). I strove to cast out fear and keep my thought uplifted to the true sense of man and his origin.

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