In 1987 I was pregnant with our third child

Christine Leimbach-Walen

In 1987 I was pregnant with our third child. One morning I woke and found that I could not pass water. This was a Sunday morning. I went to church, and although it was painful to move, I found the service to be of comfort. When I got home, because I was still in pain, I called a Christian Science practitioner to pray for me.

She asked me to look up the following citation in Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy: "For right reasoning there should be but one fact before the thought, namely, spiritual existence. In reality there is no other existence, since Life cannot be united to its unlikeness, mortality."

Over the two weeks that this practitioner worked with me, I really learned the difference between matter-based reasoning and reasoning from the standpoint of God's allness. I realized that trying to reason from the standpoint of both matter and Spirit, God, was futile.

During this period, I sang and thought about the words of the hymn "Rock of Ages" many times. One verse includes the words: "When from mortal sense I flee, /Let me hide myself in Thee." One day, I felt quite despairing of the situation and was crying, when my three-year-old daughter came into the room. She began to sing "Rock of Ages." We sang together, and she spoke to me tenderly—like a mother to a child. She even encouraged me to pray for myself. She brought the light of God's love I needed at that moment, and I felt such warm gratitude to our Father-Mother for His tender presence with us both. This was a turning point.

I then began to overturn the "poor me" thinking I had been indulging in. Gratitude, instead, became my direction. I also knew I had to find a better understanding of just what spiritual existence is. In order to do this, I studied more seriously the Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly. Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health: "We should forget our bodies in remembering good and the human race. Good demands of man every hour, in which to work out the problem of being." I liked this because it reminded me that wallowing in self-pity wastes precious time that otherwise could be spent contemplating the majesty of God's allness. And it showed clearly that the choice was mine.

From this point on, the pain diminished rapidly, and a matter of days later, I was just fine. There's been no similar problem in the years since.

I am so grateful for this healing. And I am also grateful for what I learned in Christian Science class instruction, and for the practitioner who stood firmly for the Truth in helping me.

Christine Leimbach-Walen Stratford, Connecticut

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