“I wish I knew what was good to steady the nerves,” said Cornelia Sommers, sighing.
“Why, Cornelia,” her mother exclaimed, with real anxiety in her tone. “I didn’t know there was anything the matter with your nerves. I will take you to Doctor Good tomorrow and have him examine you. Sit up to the fire and warm your feet, dear.”
Cornelia did not care for medicine and told her mother so.
“If you are sick,” her mother insisted, “it is better to take something in time. How does the trouble affect you? Pain or just nervousness?”
“Just nervousness, Mother. When I wake up in the night and it’s dark I see things. The things haven’t shape or size; I cannot describe them, but they throw me into such a trembling. I cover my head up with the blankets, and lie gasping for a long time. If I happen to be all by myself in the dark in the evening it’s the same. There’s somebody behind me, or down the street, or under the stairs. My teeth chatter and I feel weak all over. I’ve got so afraid to be left alone a minute that the suggestion makes my fingers and toes tingle. I know it’s foolish, but I can’t help it, even though I try. I feel so silly, too, at my lack of self-control.”
Grandmother, knitting in the corner, looked at Cornelia and then took off her specs. “Cornelia,” she said, “I had nerves just like thine when I was a girl. I covered my head up in the night, and I heard things, and thought I saw worse things, just as thee does. Thy mother is right; thee ought to go and see Doctor Good. I went to see a doctor when I was thy age, and I’ll tell thee what he told me to do, and save thee some trouble if thee wants to know.”
Cornelia said she did, and grandmother went on:
“He was a real good old doctor, and seemed to know just what kind of medicine to prescribe for mind or body, and this is what he said to me one day, when I called at his office to tell him about my nervousness. ‘My child,’ he said, ‘your nerves are all right, or will be in a little while if you will do just as I say. When you feel trembly or weak and afraid to look around, close your eyes and say a chapter in the Bible to yourself. You’ll stop trembling. If the attack is a very hard one, and you are very much afraid, say the chapter out loud. Get the habit of doing this; take the medicine as needed and your nerves will be wonderfully strengthened.’
“That’s what my old doctor told me, and I tried it. The very next time I felt an attack coming on in the night, I followed his directions, repeating ‘The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want’ aloud. If thee’ll believe it, all the dreadful things I had been in the habit of seeing and hearing took their flight. Every time they visited me, they became dimmer and farther off, until I grew to have as steady nerves as I wanted. Try my old doctor’s prescription, Cornelia, and see how thee likes it. It may save thee a doctor’s bill. If it doesn’t work, then thy mother had better take thee to Doctor Good.”
Cornelia tried the remedy, and she proved the truth of her grandmother’s words.
In turning our thoughts to the Lord and thanking Him for all His wondrous love to us, brings calmness to our hearts.
Quietly meditating upon portions of the Word which bring Him before us, will truly bring rest to our souls.