When Granddaddy would tell the drummer boy story, even the tough guys in our family turned into butter. Maybe it was the way he told the story—and the fact that Granddaddy himself was kind of a tough guy. So when his lips would tremble and his voice would break halfway through, you knew he was really touched. And when he got to the end—and the tears were streaming down his face ... well, you were probably crying a little, too.

It was a simple story, one that may never make it into the history books. It went like this.

Napoleon Bonaparte was leading his exhausted, starving troops into a crucial battle during the French Revolution. In those days, a drummer boy would walk alongside the general and beat out orders to the troops. A certain kind of drumbeat meant "Charge." Another meant "Retreat." And so on.

Well, this particular battle went worse and worse for Napoleon's army. Finally, he lost all hope of winning. "Beat a retreat!" he ordered the drummer boy.

But the boy kept on beating a charge. Napoleon yelled, "I said, Beat a retreat!!!"

The drummer boy went right on beating a charge. Furious, Napoleon screamed, "Do you want me to run you through with a sword? I'm telling you one last time, Beat a retreat!!!!"

"Sir," the boy said, "they didn't teach me to beat a retreat in drummer school. But I can beat a charge. And if you'll let me, I'll beat a charge that will make your men stand up and fight again. It'll fire their hearts with courage. And they'll win this battle for you!"

Suddenly, Napoleon realized that his discouragement had gotten the best of him. "All right," he told the drummer boy, "beat a charge!" Within the hour, Napoleon's men won the battle.

Sometimes, I've discovered, healings of long-term illnesses are won in much the same way as that battle was—by persistent courage under fire. And where do you get such courage? From God. At least, that's the way it happened with me.

I'd been generally healthy all my life—until a debilitating affliction set in almost ten years ago. There was a lot of internal pain and weakness. Eventually, I became almost totally incapacitated and needed round-the-clock nursing care.

My family rose to the occasion wonderfully. My son, for instance, dropped out of college for five months to take care of me.

Since I'd been a Christian Scientist all my life, I just naturally did what had never failed me in the past: I prayed. Things improved a bit and I was able to get out a few times. But then—Wham!—the pain and weakness returned with renewed force. There were times when I wondered if I'd still be there at the end of the day. I was frightened to be alone for even a few seconds.

At that point I realized that—if I were ever going to go forward toward healing—I'd have to stop having such negative thoughts. Thoughts that were seeing me not making it.

For me, there was just one way to control the fear and despair. That was to keep my thought fixed on God. When I did that, I felt safe.

Maybe that's because to know God is life. It's like Jesus said, "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent" (John 17:3). So if you fill your moments and days with thoughts of God, that's the continuity of your life. That's the security of your life.

I thought about God endlessly. I thought about God the way Mary Baker Eddy describes Him in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love" (p. 465).

Sometimes I'd think and pray all night about Love—about God's overwhelming love for each one of His children. And about what that meant for me. It meant His arms were around me. It meant He'd never let anything bad happen to me. It meant I was the exact image of Love, because the Bible says we're all the image and likeness of God.

I also thought a lot about how God is Spirit. Because I'm like Him, I reasoned, I have to be spiritual. I have to be so much more than the uncomfortable material body I seem to be.

As I reasoned with myself in these simple ways, I felt the scared, diseased, despairing thoughts gradually leaving. It was like putting a glass full of dirty water under a tap and running nice clear water into it. Pretty soon, you've got nothing but pure, clean water left.

Pouring in the fresh water of God's love and truth and goodness gradually washed away all my dark thoughts. It made me less conscious of my material body and more conscious of Spirit. It showed me reality—the reality of God's perfectly ordered spiritual creation. The reality of me. And the unreality of the painful, disordered mechanism I seemed to be.

But several of my closest family members weren't seeing that reality yet. So they were terribly worried about me. And they couldn't really understand why I wasn't getting a medical diagnosis. One of these family members was Granddaddy.

Then one night another relative sat on the side of my bed and told me he wanted to read me a sentence from Science and Health—a sentence that would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I should have a diagnosis. "To heal by argument," the sentence said, "find the type of the ailment, get its name, and array your mental plea against the physical" (p. 412).

Frankly, I wasn't sure what to say, so I just prayed. But then, in the middle of that night, I suddenly woke up with what was—for me—the answer. "I have its name," I thought. "Its name is actually nothing!" Because God is All—total good—there is nothing else! I felt profoundly satisfied with this answer, and I knew my family would, too.

But here's the funny thing. ... No one ever mentioned the idea of a physical examination again! It was as if the whole question needed to be settled in my thought. And once it was, it ceased to be an issue.

There were other turning points during my healing. Like the way I stopped counting how many months I'd been sick. I gradually realized that I lived in God's eternal life—not in mortal time slots. So what mattered wasn't how long I'd been sick. What mattered was what I was learning about unending divine Life.

Another turning point came the day I promised God that, if I was healed, I'd devote the rest of my life to helping other people learn about God—and be healed. But then, moments after I'd made that resolution, I realized it wasn't good enough. It was like delaying the love I could give and receive. So I started my career as a healer right at that moment.

Day by day, my full healing came. The more I helped other people through prayer, the more I strengthened my own healing. Within a year I was hiking, climbing steep hills, carrying a full schedule. And I still do. In many ways, I've become a new person. I'm happier and more at peace than ever before.

Granddaddy was pleased to see all this. In some ways, it confirmed his natural faith in God. And, though I'd always loved his drummer boy story, it had new meaning for me now. I think it did for him, too.

Mary Metzner Trammell

PSALMS

The mouth of the righteous speaketh
wisdom, and his tongue talketh of
judgment. The law of his God is in
his heart; none of his steps shall
slide. ... The salvation of the
righteous is of the Lord: he is their strength in the time
of trouble.

Psalms 37:30, 31, 39