“The radical sense of newness”

I loved getting the compilation of testimonies! 

The assignment asks if I feel differently now about Christian Science healing and my practice. The testimonies definitely stirred things up! They challenge a kind of conservatism or settling down that occasionally seems attractive or easier. They ask me to be more realistic in considering God’s power. 

And it wasn’t long after getting the testimonies that I needed their help. Our family had decided to use some of our frequent flyer miles to go across the country to a quiet place we know, in order to pray. (We didn’t realize just how much prayer we’d be doing!) About half way through our week I became very ill. The problem, which seemed organic, involved constant pain, and I was having trouble praying. 

I called a practitioner—or rather my husband called for me—and I felt supported. And my husband and daughter were remarkably helpful, not showing any signs of dreariness there in the hotel room with me for days while it rained outside. Along with reading the Pastor to me, they read the Association testimonies. The directness and ordinary tone and telling of those healings was very eloquent, and I heard them.

However, as the pain continued, getting home seemed impossible. At one point the practitioner mentioned a passage in Miscellany (My. 191:15–25) that speaks of Easter morning and says in part: “Spirit is saying unto matter: I am not there, am not within you. Behold the place where they laid me; but human thought has risen!” In my case, Spirit lifted human thought to a higher sense—one not confined to the pain and fear—and sent it down a better road, so to speak. There, with a sort of infant acknowledgment of the divine, it felt right and safe to travel home and be healed. I greatly appreciated the practitioner, with his ample experience with healing, for not questioning the decision to travel.

So, although I hadn’t sat up for even five minutes or eaten anything for three days and four nights (only having sips of apple juice), the next day I sat up in the car, at the airport, and on the plane for eleven hours straight, feeling comfortable, cared for, unafraid, and unfevered. There was no fear of a six-plus hour plane flight with no getting off or calling the practitioner. I came home hungry, had a piece of toast, and then a bowl of Cheerios in the middle of the night. The next day I made myself some really good soup. I am fine.

I know some people say, when reading testimonies like the ones in our Association packet, that that was another time and things happen differently now. Well, this didn’t seem like an easy healing. It didn’t come like a flash of revelation. There was suffering on my part and great (heroic) prayer on the part of the practitioner for days and long into the nights. But I was guided to somewhere very different—a place that I’d lost sight of for a while, a place that fear didn’t know about. And this different place shares the radical sense of newness and Immanuel that I get from many of the healings in the Association packet.

There’s still a lot for me to think about in regard to my healing and our compilation of healings. It feels important to do that.