When I was only five years old, I was healed through Christian Science...

Laura B. Haddock

When I was only five years old, I was healed through Christian Science of an illness the doctors had been unable to diagnose but which they said would probably be fatal. I had lapsed into a coma, and at that point my mother sought help from a Christian Science practitioner. In a short time I regained consciousness, sat up in bed, and said I wanted an ice cream. Mother offered to go to the store and get me one, but I said no, I wanted to go myself. This I did, for the healing had been complete.

My brother and I were enrolled in a Christian Science Sunday School and my parents began the study of this religion. At sixteen, however, I turned away from Science. I seemed unable to understand or to practice it, and decided it was not for me. But the seed must have been well planted, for when I was about to begin a two-year course in a business college I decided I would turn over a new leaf: do everything I could that I thought was right; and among these right things I included the reading of one section of the Christian Science Bible Lesson each day without fail.

I was faithful to this plan, even though I did not understand what I was reading. In what, as I recall, was about six months, I awoke to the fact that I was able to do "mental arithmetic" faster and more accurately than anyone else in the class. Until then I had been a slow thinker, getting only passing grades in any subject. I pondered what could have wrought the change, and realized it had to be the Lesson-Sermon in the Christian Science Quarterly, as that was the only thing I was doing that I had not done before. I decided to feast more richly on this source of goodness, and increased the amount of time I gave it daily. In the following year I joined The Mother Church and the branch church where I had gone to Sunday School. I also attended Sunday School again until I reached the age of twenty.

I graduated from the business college with top grades and was one of two pupils chosen to go on to a liberal arts college under an experimental plan that would allow me to receive a bachelor's degree in two more years. Though I had longed for a college education, there had not been enough money for me to have it. But the two years were within our financial reach.

Since then, Christian Science has blessed me in innumerable ways. It has healed me of chronic constipation, chronic sick headaches, and the tendency each winter to have severe colds and coughs. My character has changed gradually. As a young person I was morbidly sensitive, intensely shy, and deeply doubted my ability to excel in anything. These characteristics I can honestly say have been wiped from my experience, and been replaced by much happiness and a satisfying career.

How can one express adequate gratitude for such a religion, other than by striving every day to live it more effectively!

(Miss) Laura B. Haddock
Andover, Massachusetts

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Words of Current Interest

June 7, 1975

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