In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy writes this about moving from belief to understanding: “Until belief becomes faith, and faith becomes spiritual understanding, human thought has little relation to the actual or divine” (p. 297). A year ago I was graced with an experience that nudged me toward understanding. To explain this healing, I need to go back to my childhood. 

My parents faced many challenges in the years that my siblings and I were growing up. When these challenges became overwhelming, they lashed out at each other and at us, verbally and physically. We were raised in a conservative branch of Christianity and taught to regard God as punishing. In those days I believed that a righteous angel was waiting to catch me in sin and paint a black mark on my soul. When my soul was entirely black, I would be sent to hell. 

Thus, in the aftermath of these experiences of abuse, I found no refuge in God. Instead, I assumed my siblings and I deserved punishment, and I feared that worse still awaited us in eternity. Not surprisingly, I developed a phobia that a hill behind our house was an active volcano.

In college, I studied classical singing, but illness and an utter lack of self-esteem hampered my progress. Eventually I entered therapy in an attempt to heal the limitations that seemed to persist from my early years. Therapy was helpful, and by the time it concluded, if you had asked me, “Have you forgiven your parents?” I would have answered, “Of course.” And I would have given you several rational reasons why.

In the years that followed, I married and had a child, and began an informal study of the world’s religions. I was especially drawn to the ancient writings of Hinduism, which teach of an unconditionally loving God who is our divine parent, from whom we cannot possibly be separated. Soon I began to notice this idea of humanity’s oneness with God in the writings of Christian mystics as well. The idea that I am not sinful, but rather partake of the divine, began to take hold.

When my daughter was seven, her piano teacher, who had heard me sing in a local opera production, invited me to become one of the soloists at the local Christian Science branch church, where she is music director. Knowing nothing about Christian Science, I agreed out of curiosity and for the chance to sing sacred music. But when I first stood in the church auditorium and saw the words “God is Love” painted on the far wall, I felt that I had come home. My husband, daughter, and I began attending regularly.

Within weeks of that first visit, one of my brothers was diagnosed with a rare and inoperable form of cancer. When I heard the news, the first thought that entered my mind was “This began in our childhood.” I was being tempted to believe that the disease was real and that it was caused by the stress we experienced as children. In the year after my brother’s death, I struggled to follow Mrs. Eddy’s advice on page 392 of Science and Health: “Stand porter at the door of thought. Admitting only such conclusions as you wish realized in bodily results, you will control yourself harmoniously. When the condition is present which you say induces disease, whether it be air, exercise, heredity, contagion, or accident, then perform your office as porter and shut out these unhealthy thoughts and fears.”

Yet when my sister was diagnosed with another unusual cancer only two years later, the thought that the disease was caused by our difficult childhood came back much more aggressively. No matter how I tried to “stand porter,” the suggestion kept breaking through that our childhood traumas were the ground in which these rare cancers had taken root.

When I saw the words “God is Love” painted on the church wall, I felt that I had come home.

At that point, I contacted a Christian Science practitioner for prayerful help. When she returned my call, the love in her voice brought me to tears almost immediately. Among the many helpful things she said to me, the most radical were three simple words: “You are untouched.” She continued, “Not only you, but your sister, your brother, all of you are untouched.” For days I felt stunned by this assertion. But as I kept claiming it, not only for myself but for everyone in my family, its truth became more and more evident. She also referred me to Hymn 149 by Susan F. Campbell in the Christian Science Hymnal, which she described as my family’s real history: “In Love divine all earth-born fear and sorrow / Fade as the dark when dawn pours forth her light.” Working with these ideas, within days I was released from the claim that the trauma my siblings and I had experienced had left us damaged and vulnerable to disease.

One night not long afterward, I was reading Science and Health, and I came upon the following passage from page 542: “Though error hides behind a lie and excuses guilt, error cannot forever be concealed. Truth, through her eternal laws, unveils error. Truth causes sin to betray itself, and sets upon error the mark of the beast.”

As I read these lines, an image arose in my consciousness of myself as entirely pure, yet shrouded by a heavy cloak like an animal’s pelt. Suddenly an angelic figure ripped the pelt off me, and I realized that for decades I had been smothered beneath it and that the “beast” it belonged to was an inability to forgive my parents. As I saw this, there washed over me the tenderest love for them both, a love as infinite and unconditional as the love I feel for my daughter. I realized in that moment that I had not forgiven them, despite what I might have said to the contrary, because I had never before known such love for them. This love was unassailable, the reflection of divine Principle. Moreover, it was entirely outside of time and negated cause and effect. I saw that no matter what mistakes have been made in our human experience, divine Love is supreme and can never be conditional upon any human act.

Then I began to think about the many children whose stories in the press had so disturbed me over the years: an innocent Muslim girl who was stoned to death, children sold into prostitution or slavery, children forced to become soldiers—abused children and their abusers throughout the world. For a moment, I held all of them, too, in that infinity of Love.

Since this experience, each time I speak with or visit my parents, our interactions are marked with tender affection. Perhaps this is because I no longer seek their apology, or maybe it’s because I no longer feel guilt about “black marks” on my own soul. In a sweet reversal of my childhood fears, an “angel” of forgiveness has washed us all clean. And now, whenever I’m confronted with news of crime, illness, poverty, and other claims, especially upon children, I pray to know them as untouched, as forever safe within God’s infinite embrace. And I give thanks for the grace to affirm this truth, not with belief, or even faith, but with understanding.