WHEN OUR DAUGHTER was growing up, several dentists and hygienists confidently reported that she would definitely need braces in the future. Her teeth were out of place and some had come in behind others. Finally, after a subsequent visit to another dentist who repeated the prior diagnosis, I made an appointment with an orthodontist.
At that point, my husband asked me to wait a week so he could pray with our daughter. After studying the Bible Lesson from the Christian Science Quarterly each morning, he would write her a note with ideas that specifically pertained to teeth. His assurance and confidence that God was her Maker and was maintaining everything about her in perfect, precise order—with nothing out of place—was calming and healing for all of us. In the Bible, the prophet Isaiah reminds us many times about who our Creator is and why He made us: "I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him" (Isa. 43:7).
Often medical opinion can be given with an air of inevitability, leaving the patient feeling there is no choice but to follow through with the suggested course of treatment. But there is always another choice if we're willing to stop for a moment and remember that God's laws of good and perfection are always operating and always have been—in our past, present, and future. Mary Baker Eddy explained that "The determination to hold Spirit in the grasp of matter is the persecutor of Truth and Love" (Science and Health, p. 28).
