This year, my mother, daughter, and I are reading together Mary Baker Eddy’s primary text on Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, cover to cover, sharing our inspiration via Zoom. It is a lovely reminder of the healing I had a couple of decades ago.

My husband and I had been praying diligently for a couple of years about having a child, and the thought kept coming to me to read Science and Health all the way through. I’d never done that before, even though Eddy states: “Read this book from beginning to end. Study it, ponder it” (p. 559). I rationalized that I was reading the book through the excerpts in the weekly Bible Lessons from the Christian Science Quarterly, and I was too busy for more. But then, one day, I finally picked up the book to begin reading it cover to cover, and I found my healing answer—on page one!

At the top of that first page is this quote from Christ Jesus: “Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him.” Eddy goes on to state in the first sentence on that page that “all things are possible to God.”

This was so clear to me that I wrote in the margin, “Knowing with the Mind of God.” I wasn’t thinking about the child of God with a human mind; I was thinking as the child of God, with the Mind that is God, which was the Mind I reflected. God had given me the clarity I needed to put aside all other priorities and plans and welcome this precious idea of parenting. If I was willing to yield to God’s direction and could find my answer on page one, I knew “the dear Father’s loving‑kindness” (Science and Health, p. 366) would always be with us, guiding and caring for all of us. With that, I knew a baby would be forthcoming, and within a month, my husband and I learned we were expecting.

Fast-forward four months. My husband was at our church, conducting the Sunday evening service as First Reader. I was at home in the kitchen preparing dinner, as we had planned to host church friends at our house after the service. Suddenly, I had a pain in my womb so powerful that I fell to the kitchen floor. I crawled to the phone and called the Christian Science practitioner who had been diligently supporting us in prayer through the pregnancy. I was also able to contact the church and deliver a message that it was not a good night to bring home dinner guests.

The next day my mother drove several hours to help care for me, and the first thing she did was to put a sign on the headboard of my bed that read, “The king’s daughter is all glorious within” (Psalms 45:13).

I was wrestling with the fear of a miscarriage, which made me think of the Bible story of Jacob at Peniel (see Genesis 32). In Science and Health, Eddy writes: “Jacob was alone, wrestling with error,—struggling with a mortal sense of life, substance, and intelligence as existent in matter with its false pleasures and pains,—when an angel, a message from Truth and Love, appeared to him and smote the sinew, or strength, of his error, till he saw its unreality; and Truth, being thereby understood, gave him spiritual strength in this Peniel of divine Science” (p. 308). In the book’s Glossary of Bible names and terms, Jacob is defined in part as: “Inspiration; the revelation of Science, in which the so-called material senses yield to the spiritual sense of Life and Love” (p. 589).

The next day, I couldn’t find my peace. In a very dark moment, I thought I might have to give up and accept a miscarriage, but my wonderful husband and our practitioner were unrelenting. They were not letting go and would not allow me to let go of that baby, but urged me to hold on, as they were, to the truth of the baby as God’s spiritual creation. As a result, I felt as though I was giving my consent to go up higher in my understanding and conviction of existence as wholly spiritual, until the downward pull and the struggle ceased. It was an attraction Godward until the earthward pull was severed and freedom gained. The pain stopped, and I was able to get out of bed with complete mental and physical freedom.

This was a milestone healing for me in my understanding of Christian Science. I learned a great lesson about the importance of yielding only to God, something mentioned 30 times in Science and Health. Five months later, we welcomed a beautiful baby girl. That was 23 years ago, and our daughter has brought us immeasurable joy.

I am so grateful for Christ Jesus and for Mary Baker Eddy and the Science of Christianity she gave us.

Eddy writes: “Some people yield slowly to the touch of Truth. Few yield without a struggle, and many are reluctant to acknowledge that they have yielded; but unless this admission is made, evil will boast itself above good. The Christian Scientist has enlisted to lessen evil, disease, and death; and he will overcome them by understanding their nothingness and the allness of God, or good” (Science and Health, p. 450).

Yielding to Truth and spirituality blesses not only ourselves but also our loved ones and the world.