About a year and a half ago, while attending services in our...

About a year and a half ago, while attending services in our branch Church of Christ, Scientist, I was troubled with the fear of fainting. Also, the same fear with accompanying sensations persisted while I was ushering in our church auditorium, and several times while I was standing in a checkout line in a grocery store. As a child I had fainted in church several times and also once in a movie theater. This occurred before I had even heard of Christian Science. Although I was now a student of Christian Science, the fear of embarrassment and disrupting a church service, should I lose consciousness, was very much in my thought. I knew this fear needed to be healed.

One day while I was reading one of my favorite hymns in the Christian Science Hymnal, two lines stood out to me that I hadn't paid much attention to before (No. 58): "In Thy Spirit living, moving,/We shall neither faint nor fall." Pondering these words helped, but the fear was still there. Then one evening at the Wednesday testimony meeting in our branch church, a friend of mine (who did not know of my problem) shared an experience that was very meaningful to me. She testified that once when she felt faint, she was sustained by holding fast to the thought that "we stand for Truth."

This statement really helped me progress. Each time the fear seemed to invade my thought, I clung to spiritual truths. I insisted that there was only one Mind, the source of all true consciousness, and that I could never be separated from that Mind. In Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy I read (p. 480), "Consciousness, as well as action, is governed by Mind,—is in God, the origin and governor of all that Science reveals." This passage added one more weight in the scale of Truth for me. Also, a strong statement of truth that I learned in Christian Science class instruction helped me toward the healing. It was based on these lines from a hymn (Hymnal, No. 123): "I'll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,/Upheld by My gracious, omnipotent hand." Months passed. Each time the fear of losing consciousness would come upon me, I would "stand for Truth," and I always managed to win, as the fear would abate.

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November 12, 1982
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