Basking in God’s love heals long-standing pain

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Around 2014, I began experiencing “attacks” in which my entire torso would feel great pressure. This occurred every several weeks and was frightening because of its strangeness and severity. Usually, I would call a Christian Science practitioner and the symptoms would fade within an hour. But there remained the fear of the condition returning—which it did!

I knew the condition was a false belief, but didn’t seem to be able to get a permanent healing. This went on for more than five years, and then it seemed to be compounded with stomach pain. I would get stomachaches nearly every day, and they often seemed to evoke the torso problem. These symptoms meant that I couldn’t wear clothing in a normal way and had to make all kinds of accommodations.

For three years, I worked with several practitioners off and on. The symptoms changed a bit, but nothing was healed and I was discouraged. Finally, I embraced a different approach: to stop praying about the illnesses and just focus on lifting my thought. Numerous practitioners and Christian Science articles had urged this way of working, but it took me several years to give up my determination to “heal the problem.” This lifting of thought happened in two ways:

  1. The first, and most profound, was to start every spiritual session by basking in God’s love. Usually, I didn’t feel that love to begin with, so I would just sit there, calmly and expectantly listening and waiting to feel this love. Eventually it would come and feel real to me. I did this for many months.

  2. The other thought-lifter was related to Mary Baker Eddy’s explanation: “Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals” (Science and Health, p. 476:32–2). Although I loved that idea, I seemed unable to apply it when facing real-life “sinning mortal man.” Instead of seeing the perfect man, I just saw the mortal man: selfish, sarcastic, impatient, dismissive, or whatever.

One day it occurred to me that although Jesus probably did “see” people who were lame, or blind, or diseased (after all, he could see they needed healing), he didn’t believe what he saw. I realized that the sinning man is like a dramatic mask that’s hiding the actual person. I don’t have to be fooled by that mask, no matter how colorful it is. Somehow this realization helped me be less impressed by personalities and character flaws.

These two changes in thought happened between the autumn of 2023 and the spring of 2024. One day in April of 2024, I realized that I hadn’t experienced either of those long-standing symptoms for many weeks or even months. I felt a quiet awe that what had seemed so problematic and permanent was now gone. I kept this to myself for a while, treasuring and supporting the healing.

Now, nearly a year later, I can report that both the stomach and torso problems are gone and haven’t returned—but the basking in God’s love has remained!