Divine mothering heals baby’s earache

Elisabeth Anetta Schwartz

One day after preschool, my three children and I were joined by another mom and her three children, who were the same age as mine. The kitchen was full as we served the children a snack. The five-year-olds, three-year-olds, and one of the one-year-olds were happily talking, eating, and playing with their food. But our daughter, the other one-year-old, began to cry and hold her ear.

The other mother, in an effort to be helpful, explained that this is how an earache starts, and that the only thing to relieve the pain would be medication. She offered to go to the store to purchase the kind she used with her children, but I explained that I would prefer to spend some quiet time with the little one and pray for her. The mother agreed to finish the lunch supervision for the other children and to set up my two older boys in their room before heading home with her own kids.

As I held my littlest one in my arms and sang a hymn to her, the first verse, from a poem titled “Mother’s Evening Prayer” by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, began to calm my thought:

O gentle presence, peace and joy and power;
O Life divine, that owns each waiting hour,
Thou Love that guards the nestling’s faltering flight!
Keep Thou my child on upward wing tonight.
(Poems, p. 4)

I found comfort in the understanding that no matter where we are or what our circumstances seem to be, divine Love is with us, and we are always safe in God’s care. The refuge I was seeking was not a far-off or future place, but right where we were, in the tender embrace of our divine Parent. We were not alone.

The baby fell asleep on my shoulder, and I was able to pick up the phone to call a Christian Science practitioner for prayerful help. The call went to voice mail, so I briefly explained the need and left my phone number.

I thought about the fact that we can hear God’s message of love regardless of the state of our material ears. In the Glossary of her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mrs. Eddy writes that ears are “not organs of the so-called corporeal senses, but spiritual understanding” (p. 585). I realized that this same spiritual understanding is available to each one of us because it comes directly from God, and nothing can disrupt God’s communication to us. I knew God was already speaking to the baby, assuring her that she was made in God’s divine image and likeness, wholly spiritual and perfect.

My daughter slept peacefully for about 45 minutes, and when she woke up, she reached for the small cup of Cheerios on the table and began to feed us both, giggling as she pushed the bits of cereal into my mouth. The phone rang. It was the practitioner, and I was so grateful to explain that the baby was clearly healed.

Elisabeth Anetta Schwartz
Andover, Massachusetts, US

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