For a long time I struggled with a problem that made me afraid: At times my heartbeat was fast and irregular. It was a silent struggle, and at the same time I was on a steadfast quest to know God better. I knew that this quest would increase my trust in His tender and protective care and that I could be healed. 

One night before going to bed, I was having a strong fight against this error, this mistaken belief that I could suffer or be separated from God’s unwavering care. I was in great discomfort. I thought of Jacob’s struggle, which we read about in the Bible and which Mary Baker Eddy writes about in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “Jacob was alone, wrestling with error,—struggling with a mortal sense of life, substance, and intelligence as existent in matter with its false pleasures and pains,—when an angel, a message from Truth and Love, appeared to him and smote the sinew, or strength, of his error, till he saw its unreality; and Truth, being thereby understood, gave him spiritual strength in this Peniel of divine Science” (p. 308). I tried to calm my thoughts, so much so that I ended up falling asleep. 

During the night, in a dream I saw “Jacob’s ladder” appearing. We hear about this in the Bible, too: “He lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it” (Genesis 28:11, 12). This has been interpreted in various ways, but one is that it represents spiritual awakening and the divine connection between God and man.