At a Wednesday evening meeting at church last year, I decided to give a testimony about a most extraordinary story. A few months earlier, my son, David, had told me about a young freelance journalist who worked for him and had been captured by the Libyan military. My son had called me to ask for prayerful support as he, in turn, sought release for his journalist. During the six weeks of the journalist’s captivity, I prayed for her release. In a most remarkable set of circumstances, she was moved to a private villa in Tripoli and, thereafter, released to the custody of the Hungarian government and finally transported to freedom in Tunisia.  

In the midst of my testimony, I came face to face with a significant challenge of my own. My mind went entirely blank. I could no longer find words to express my thoughts. I recognized my friends in church but could remember nothing about my relationship with them. 

After the meeting, the driver who had brought me to church came to pick me up and take me home. I sat quietly in the back seat, so he was unaware of my difficulty. That evening, my son called to ask after my day. I could talk with him, but not intelligently. Concerned, David told me he would check in with me the following day.

My son and my daughter, Barb, tell me that when they arrived at my apartment the next day, I was in bed and not myself. They took me immediately to an academic medical center for emergency examination. From the time of their arrival and across the next three weeks, during which I was in one hospital and then another, I have no recollection of the events that transpired and have since had to rely on my children’s telling of them.  

At the hospital, the doctors explained to my son and daughter that I had suffered a significant stroke and had lost normal cognitive functioning and all ability to retrieve words. As I was on the cusp of 90 years old, the doctor cautioned that Barb and David should expect reasonably little recovery. I later learned that my children were a tremendous support at this time, tending to my care and visiting me every day. I had many other precious visits, from friends, one of whom read the Christian Science Bible Lesson to me. Two speech therapists, hired by my son, also came to see me. 

Previous to this incident, I had been studying earnestly about the consciousness of God. An unpublished address titled “God, Mind, Consciousness,” attributed to Martha Wilcox, a worker in Mary Baker Eddy’s home and later a teacher of Christian Science, had come into my hands through my mother. I had read the article well and often. It was illuminating. The author brought out, as Mrs. Eddy clearly did, that consciousness belongs to God. As we are God’s reflection, His spiritual idea, we fully reflect the divine consciousness. We can have no other consciousness. Anything that is not good, or of God (such as fear or criticism or the belief that one is sick), is not a part of true consciousness and is therefore a false belief. False because its source is not in God, who is only good and is All. 

With that scientific reasoning, and holding to it, the belief in any other consciousness is destroyed. Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “A spiritual idea has not a single element of error, and this truth removes properly whatever is offensive” (p. 463). 

As a result of what I gained from my study, I had been watching my thinking very carefully and had put out, as well as I could, all false thinking—all errors of thought. Not only criticism, but irritation, hatred, personal sense, and so on. This I did by claiming the truth that there is only one Mind, or God—one consciousness—in every instance when a false thought claimed a place in my consciousness. I was slowly and humbly learning to impersonalize error, or evil, and to allow only good to fill my thoughts.

One night in the hospital, after I had gone to sleep, I became aware of the fact that I was in a very dark room and there was only one window in the room. A slatted blind covered the window, which left about half an inch of light all around it. I walked over to the window and used two fingers to open the slats. I looked into the next area. It was filled with the most exquisite light, gentle but strong. I said to myself, “This is the consciousness of God, and I reflect it all.” There was nothing more. I slept on. The next morning I remembered the previous night and felt comfort and a quiet peace. 

Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health: “One moment of divine consciousness, or the spiritual understanding of Life and Love, is a foretaste of eternity. This exalted view, obtained and retained when the Science of being is understood, would bridge over with life discerned spiritually the interval of death, and man would be in the full consciousness of his immortality and eternal harmony, where sin, sickness, and death are unknown” (p. 598). I am convinced that I saw something of this divine consciousness.

During the next two days my memory started to come back, and within a week my mental faculties were totally restored. 

I am home now in my own apartment, fit and happy.

My profound gratitude and love for Mrs. Eddy is boundless. She discovered the truth of the universe and man, and has given it willingly to the world.