Testimony of Healing June 24, 2019 Issue

No more nightmares

Joan E. Atkinson

Some years ago I was experiencing a series of vicious dreams in the early morning just before waking up. It got so bad that even after waking, I carried the dark sense of these dreams into my morning with me. At that point I decided to do something about them—that is, to pray.

I remembered a statement Mary Baker Eddy makes on page 61 of her book Retrospection and Introspection: “… if you fall asleep, actually conscious of the truth of Christian Science,—namely, that man’s harmony is no more to be invaded than the rhythm of the universe,—you cannot awake in fear or suffering of any sort.”

I decided that when going to bed at night, I would pray the prayer that covers every human need—the Lord’s Prayer—until I fell asleep. I would pray slowly and thoughtfully, exploring the meaning of each line, and if I finished the prayer before falling asleep, I would simply start over again. I did this for several nights, always falling asleep before finishing the prayer even once. And as of the first night that I undertook this project, the nightmares left and never came back.

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