Unreturned texts, forgotten appointments, dismissive attitudes. These little so-called abandonments can leave us feeling vulnerable, unloved, and unwanted. We may develop a “thicker skin” or a “defensive wall” in an effort not to feel hurt again, but what can we do to really heal? Where do we start? 

We start with ourselves. We start by kindly noticing the ache in our own hearts. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, said, “If we would open their prison doors for the sick, we must first learn to bind up the broken-hearted” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 366). Sometimes we are the brokenhearted, and we need healing first.

In those times, another passage from Mrs. Eddy’s writings can especially encourage us: “When a hungry heart petitions the divine Father-Mother God for bread, it is not given a stone,—but more grace, obedience, and love. If this heart, humble and trustful, faithfully asks divine Love to feed it with the bread of heaven, health, holiness, it will be conformed to a fitness to receive the answer to its desire; then will flow into it the ‘river of His pleasure,’ the tributary of divine Love, and great growth in Christian Science will follow,—even that joy which finds one’s own in another’s good” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 127).