My spouse and my faith
Often when people meet me and discover, as we get acquainted, that I am a Christian Scientist and my husband is not, they ask me how it works for me to practice my religion. Then as the conversation continues and they learn that my husband is a retired medical professional even more questions come up. They often ask how we raised our three children with one of us leaning on medical care and the other leaning on spiritual care.
Now, just to clarify, there is no “church mandate” or rule about Christian Scientists seeking medical treatment. Christian Scientists are free to choose whatever we individually feel is the best course of treatment for ourselves in any instance. I choose to rely on prayer and spiritual healing for my health care because I find it to be effective.
It’s no secret that there are many Christian Scientists married to spouses of other religions or with no religious interest. My husband has no particular interest in organized religion. (Many times throughout our marriage he’s asked me: “Why are you still reading that same book?” [Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures].) However, our children were raised going to the Christian Science Sunday School and Christian Science summer camps. Whenever our children were ill, and when the children were too young to make their own decisions, there were a few times that we needed to decide between medical treatment and Christian Science treatment for their health care.
The majority of times physical conditions were healed through Christian Science treatment, such as fevers, colds and flus, and sports-related injuries. Most important, throughout their growing up days, the children learned how to use the truths found in the Bible and Science and Health themselves. Today in their adult lives, they know about God’s love for them.
You may ask how I felt when medical treatment was chosen for the children. I saw this as a kindness to my husband, a respect for his highest sense of care, and I always knew nothing could interrupt our children’s spiritual oneness with God. It was a temporary means for which I could be grateful and thank the medical professionals—one family doctor in particular.
The challenges my husband and I have faced together aren’t limited to our different approaches to health care. Negative character traits, such as bad temper, for instance, have improved or disappeared while good qualities, such as consideration for one another, have grown. As many couples have discovered, we have found that forgiveness of one another helps us to work through differences.
We are both children of God who have tried to help others the best way we each know.
As I see it, my husband and I have good solid love for one another, which I know originates in God, Love itself. And this gets us through any rocky times and on to enjoying each other’s company. I continually acknowledge our oneness with God and that we both individually express spiritual qualities such as strength, courage, intelligence, and kindness. All the prayers I have prayed for myself, our marriage, and our children no doubt helped propel me into the public practice and teaching of Christian Science and have helped me be better able to communicate with people who have questions about Christian Science.
Many times I have shared how both my husband and I have compassion for people, and the intent of our professions has been to relieve people’s suffering. While it is not always easy to be on such different wavelengths, I stand by the spiritual fact that we are both children of God who have tried to help others the best way we each know. When marital difficulties come up, my way of working on these issues is through prayer, and through knowing that my husband and I are each complete expressions of God, coming together to share our uniqueness.
It helps me to affirm that my husband does not need to “get” happiness from me, nor do I need to get it from him. We both get it from God to share it. I like to think about this idea from the Bible: “Thy Maker is thine husband” (Isaiah 54:5 ). That means all the love I need comes to me directly from God. The same is true for my husband, and what a joy it is to share this love together!
I also love to think about the expression “walk in pairs, not as pairs.” To me, this means that when you walk in pairs, you maintain your unique individuality while sharing your lives together. When you walk as pairs, you are dependent on each other for a sense of completeness, rather than looking to God, and you lose sight of what makes you unique.
My marriage to someone who is not a Christian Scientist has not kept me from practicing Christian Science or from having a strong marriage. On the contrary it has caused me to be stronger in healing myself and others. I like to keep this important point in thought: “Be honest, be true to thyself, and true to others; then it follows thou wilt be strong in God, the eternal good. Heal through Truth and Love; there is no other healer” (Mary Baker Eddy, Rudimental Divine Science, p. 8 ).
Through marital challenges, I have learned to be “the challenger” of any lack of harmony and face the “dis” of disagreements, discouragement, disappointment, and disease by depending on God. My husband’s presence brings joy to my life, but I know that my eternal support is and always has been God. I continue to cherish this statement from Science and Health: “The intercommunication is always from God to His idea, man” (p. 284 ).