Our baby’s spiritual senses were perfectly intact and unimpaired.

After 18 years of marriage, my wife and I still had no children. Both of us were already well into our forties and the prospects for having a child seemed pretty bleak. But we remembered that in Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy says, “Desire is prayer; and no loss can occur from trusting God with our desires, that they may be moulded and exalted before they take form in words and in deeds.” We decided to trust God with this desire and acknowledge that all things were indeed possible to Him. Soon after we made this commitment, my wife became pregnant.

During the full term of the pregnancy we worked with a Christian Science practitioner, who helped us keep our thought focused on the spiritual reality governing what appeared to be happening humanly. We also engaged a licensed midwife who had worked with our practitioner in the past to assist us with natural childbirth. The midwife recommended that we use the birthing center at a local hospital rather than having the birth at home. She felt that the hospital provided a homelike environment and was near where she lived. I think it also provided her with backup medical assistance in case anything went wrong. Because she had worked with other Christian Science parents as well as with our practitioner, we agreed to use the hospital facility.

On the day my wife went into labor, we checked into the birthing center about 1:00 in the afternoon. At one point the cervix dilation was not sufficient to allow the birth to happen.  The midwife let me know so that I could notify our practitioner, which I did immediately. In a few minutes, the cervix was fully dilated and the birth proceeded normally. I was impressed, not only by the quickness and effectiveness of the practitioner’s prayer, but also by the midwife’s confidence that this need could be met spiritually. Even though her thought was medically based, she’d seen Christian Science in action before and was willing to make it her first resort. Shortly after 7:00 that evening, the baby was born.

The next day, the staff pediatrician became concerned that the baby might have contracted a virus that was affecting his ability to see and hear. She insisted that we keep the baby in the hospital for an additional few days while she called in a specialist to run tests. The specialist who examined the baby was also concerned that his eyes weren’t tracking as expected and that something was wrong.

During this time, we stayed in close contact with the practitioner. We prayed to know that this baby’s source was God and that his spiritual senses were perfectly intact and unimpaired. I remember working with Mrs. Eddy’s definition of man on page 475 of Science and Health. It says, in part, that man “is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas,” and that man “has not a single quality underived from Deity.” We knew a virus was certainly not derived from Deity. This child was the flawless reflection of his Father-Mother God, and his true and only identity included perfect perception, including the right ideas of sight and hearing. This fact was his rightful heritage as God’s child and was inviolable.

By the time the lab returned the test results to the hospital, the baby’s eyes were already manifesting normal behavior. There was no longer any evidence of a virus. The test results confirmed this. My wife and I were deeply grateful. 

The baby is now in middle school. His eyesight is perfect and his hearing acute. He does well in school and is developing into a pretty good baseball player.

I can’t say enough about the practitioner who helped us through this challenge. Her willingness to stick with us in every circumstance night and day, her unshakeable confidence in God’s power to heal, and her dedication to the practice of Christian Science demonstrated the very foundation upon which our religion and our Church are built.