“These words and the practitioner’s love and tenderness awakened me…”
/A week after Thanksgiving on a particularly black, rainy night, my husband, five-year old grandson and I pulled into our son’s driveway. My husband went into the house while I got our grandson out the car. I hurriedly went around the car and something grabbed my heel and I was launched like a missile. Lying in a puddle, unable to move, I asked our grandson to get his grandfather. It took several minutes for my husband to come (five-year olds can get distracted in their mission) and I think my husband thought I’d be right in. During this time I claimed the “Scientific Statement of Being” and spiritual healing as what I stand on.
Once in the house I asked my husband to put me on the floor. I was immobile and in a great deal of pain. My husband was quite concerned. I assured him that I knew this was serious but that I was making a choice for spiritual healing. Later I was able to get upstairs, undress with help, shower, etc.
It was a rough weekend. I knew I needed the help of a Christian Science practitioner. However, my mind was so full of pain that it was hard to come up with a name and number of who to call from our Association.
But early in the week I was able to phone a practitioner. I love how the phone call was answered: “I’m happy to work.” These days working with the practitioner were filled with much good and inspiration. It was a happy time, making new discoveries of God, and feeling the realness of Science. So with joy and the expectation of a complete healing, I thanked the practitioner for working those two weeks and went forward on my own.
Now fast forward to mid-January. I walked with a limp and was still not 100% comfortable. However, what was uppermost in my thought since that night was choosing Life, working out my own salvation, finding the Kingdom of Heaven as a present possibility not some antiquated place that the Jews of old were looking for. I wrote in my planner, “My choice is not human stubbornness. I will not yield myself to materiality.” I was aware that I would have to work out my salvation sooner or later so now is the time. So upward I went.
Then one day as I was clearest that the “Scientific Statement of Being” was my life the floodgates opened. These were not the floodgates of Heaven but were the lightings and thunderbolts of the serpent. The symptoms of a cold turned into a constant cough which became full-blown flu symptoms. Then my big toe began to scream pain. I worked as best I could and finally after a couple of weeks picked up the phone and called the same practitioner saying, “I am a mess.” “I hurt from the top of my head to my feet and everything in between, and yes, the hip is still screaming.” What a tender response I received, “You know Calvin Frye went through that same self-doubt, but that was when he heard a voice within, saying, ‘You don’t need to struggle, but simply to waken and see you are there.’” (MBE: Years of Trial, p. 139) These words and the practitioner’s love and tenderness awakened me and again we worked for two weeks.
I’m not sure when the coughing or the painful toe left but they simply vanished. I think as I rose higher in consciousness the carnal mind having no wings just couldn’t jump that high. Matter never needed to be changed. Mortal mind simply vanished as I continued to claim and understand that indeed, “All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation.” (S&H, p. 468) The many bodily hurts were gone. I was again keeping pace with the five-year old grandson!
I had not given much thought to how I was able to move forward or what had actually happened until the Association topic letter arrived…why, this was it. It was the grace of God that St. Paul so often speaks of. It was God’s grace carrying me forward. This grace is Love itself, expressing itself, not something I needed to do. Just this morning I also understood why Paul closed his letters to the “young churches” with the benediction, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.” (Rom. 16:24) He knew the opposition that these hard-working men and women in spreading the Gospel and healing would incur in imperial Rome and throughout all ages. Today is no different.
It has been a winter of much purifying, baptism, washing away of sins that seem so harmless initially…family, all the distraction which the palm of our hand holds, the iPhone. Do I really need to know what the weather is in six other states or check my email more than twice a day or open unimportant emails rather than just trash them along with the latest call to shop? There has been a real reorientation of my life and practice…I am seeing more of the transparency of Science and wanting more of it.
And what about the practice during this time. It had just the right balance, was sweeter, and good healing was never interrupted. One outstanding healing was all but instantaneous. A woman I had been working with called in tears and terrified. She awoke unable to see. It was as if her eye’s lenses had been cracked and she was looking through a kaleidoscope. Dismissing fear, we got off the phone and the Christ, Truth, revealed with clarity that being is eternal. Life is God and must be eternal, always immortal and in perfect harmony. As I thanked God for His revelation, the phone rang with another thank you, “I can see,” said the woman who had just called. A postscript to this is all the other little claims she had accepted along the way about aging eyesight vanished!
I think Mrs. Eddy says it best, “The honest student of Christian Science is purged through Christ, Truth, and thus is ready for victory in the ennobling strife. The good fight must be fought by those who keep the faith and finish their course. Mental purgation must go on: it promotes spiritual growth, scales the mountain of human endeavor, and gains the summit in Science that otherwise could not be reached, — where the struggle with sin is forever done.” (Mis. 41:10)