A couple of mornings after a very busy holiday during which I’d had a lovely time with family and friends, I awoke with symptoms of aggressive flu—a sore throat, no energy, and a desire to just sleep. I was in contact with a Christian Science practitioner within a couple of hours, and she agreed to pray with me for healing. After I felt even worse for the next couple of days, the situation came to a head one night when I could not sleep.
The practitioner and I had been working with some citations from that week’s Bible Lesson on the subject “Are Sin, Disease, and Death Real?” In particular, I found this passage from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy helpful: “Maintain the facts of Christian Science,—that Spirit is God, and therefore cannot be sick; that what is termed matter cannot be sick; that all causation is Mind, acting through spiritual law. Then hold your ground with the unshaken understanding of Truth and Love, and you will win” (p. 417).
I reasoned that because God, Spirit, could not be sick, I could not be sick because I was not material but spiritual. I also reasoned that because the only cause was Mind, God, there had never been something that could cause me to be anything but well, as God had made me. At one point, though my voice was not very strong, I sang Hymn No. 202 from the Christian Science Hymnal, which starts out with the line, “O dreamer, leave thy dreams for joyful waking” (Rosa M. Turner, © CSBD). I was determined to blot out any thoughts that were not as God knew me to be.
