During childhood and after I...

Edith Gentry

During childhood and after I was grown, I suffered frequent attacks of sore throat. I was sick much of the time. My mother passed on with tuberculosis, and relatives and friends thought that I might go in like manner.

I was on my own resources when quite young and found it a problem to hold a position of any kind because I was unable to stay on my feet for any length of time. I desired to attend business college, and after graduation held a position for a few months, when I was forced to retire, because my health gave way completely. It was necessary to spend most of my time in bed, and the doctors pronounced the trouble tuberculosis, advising change of climate as my only hope. This did not appeal to me. I felt there must be some other way, and I prayed to God for guidance.

One evening, while seated on the front porch thinking the situation over, and asking God to show me the way out, very suddenly it was as if a voice said to me, "You take up Christian Science; it will heal you." I was almost startled at the clarity with which I received this admonition, but was thoroughly convinced that this was the answer to my prayer. I immediately arose to my feet and said aloud to myself, "I will, and I'll be a Christian Scientist." I immediately made an appointment with a Christian Science practitioner for treatment and visited her in her office the next day.

I was afraid to sleep in a draft or where the wind could reach me, but the practitioner told me that God is Love, infinite and ever present; that nothing could touch me but Love, and that Love heals. This truth healed me of fear of the weather elements, and I gave no more thought to where I should sleep.

Shortly after beginning treatments I visited in the home of an aunt for the night, and the habitual attack of sore throat came early in the evening. When I retired to my room for the night, I began to wonder just what I should do, now that I considered myself a Christian Scientist. I reasoned that I did not know how to give myself Christian Science treatment, but I did have a copy of the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, with me, and so I would read until I saw the nothingness of the error, which had no power to resist the truth of those words. I read aloud, and in a short time the discomfort left me entirely. I slept peacefully all night.

My complete healing and re-establishment in my right place in the business world required much help, together with earnest study and application on my own part. Progress seemed slow, for I was so tenaciously bound with fear. I was at the age when young folks like to be active, but was so very thin and ill that I could not participate in their activities. I shed many tears because of this handicap. I became discouraged, too, because I wanted to get back into the business world, and felt that so much time was being consumed away from it that I would find it hard to secure a position. I voiced this to the practitioner, who lovingly assured me that I could lose nothing by seeking Truth. She told me that if I would continue to study and apply my understanding the best I could to my everyday life, I should find my right place; that I could well afford to wait on God to work it out in His own way and time; and that as my thought expressed true substance, the body would respond with health and strength.

These two phases of the problem worked out most satisfactorily. I found work that is very congenial to me, and a position which I have held for more than twenty years. My health has been excellent. Since my healing I have experienced a greater sense of endurance than I had ever known before and, in fact, more than many of those around me.

I have been most wonderfully sustained at the passing on of members of my family and healed of grief occasioned thereby. I am grateful that because my healing was slow I was forced to study, and I gained a better understanding of Christian Science.

Science has taught me to be more universally loving, and has given me a happy outlook on life. I am grateful to be a member of The Mother Church and of a branch church, for class instruction, and for the privilege of serving the Cause of Christian Science in church activities. My foremost desire is so to live as to prove what our beloved Leader tells us in Science and Health (p. 201), "The best sermon ever preached is Truth practised and demonstrated by the destruction of sin, sickness, and death."—(Miss) Edith Gentry, Kansas City, Missouri.

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March 30, 1946

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