When I was little and couldn’t yet read, I used to sit at the kitchen table and pretend to read the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. While my mother cooked, she taught me to memorize “the scientific statement of being”: “There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual” (p. 468). 

I didn’t know how valuable this statement would be in the years to come.

One example stands out to me. When I gave birth to my second child, there were complications: the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck, and he stopped breathing. The doctors and nurses began doing all they could, but we were told that he was clinically dead. During this time I was silently praying and kept going over “the scientific statement of being,” endeavoring
to understand the meaning of those words.