My friend and I refer to it as my fight with the dog—the dog that lurked in the forest. But that's just our goofy way of describing the day last year when I crawled through a patch of poison oak in the woods behind my school. It's a lot of fun running around on the school property, but unfortunately, I had a bad reaction to poison oak that day. It didn't help that I'd had miserable experience with this plant twice before. I was pretty afraid.
My face began to puff up in the middle of a sleepover at my friend's house that night. I decided to go to my grandpa's house, since he lives next door. My grandpa really helped a lot. Since I was a little kid, my family and I have always turned to God for answers to our problems, and I've learned more about God and my relationship to Him in my Christian Science Sunday School.
My grandpa and I talked about the basics of prayer in Christian Science—that God created everything good, including me and plants—so nothing could really hurt me. There's a statement in Science and Health that explains this: "Since God is All, there is no room for His unlikeness. God, Spirit, alone created all, and called it good. Therefore evil, being contrary to good, is unreal, and cannot be the product of God." Science and Health, p. 339.
I started to get a really strong understanding that God's law of good is unchanging and permanent—and it applies to me.
I had definitely calmed down some by the time my dad picked me up, but I still was scared.
For the next few days, the rash spread and by the fourth day my eyes were so swollen I couldn't really see. I really did look like my friend and I said—like I'd been in a fight with a dog. My parents prayed for me, and so did my two grandmothers, who both work as Christian Science practitioners. I really appreciated their support, but I also wanted to solve this through prayer on my own. I'm just that way—when I feel challenged by something, I like to solve it myself. And this time, I really wanted to find a permanent solution to the problem.
I thought about how I prayed when I was a little kid. I used to think if I prayed hard enough, maybe I would be healed. And then I'd always check to see if the problem had gone away. But this time was different. This time I had the thought that I personally couldn't heal myself, but God could. It really changed how I looked at prayer. Instead of checking my progress or thinking I was doing something wrong, I just said, "I can't do this. But God, I know You can help me—You're the only one who can."
Even though the rash didn't go away immediately, I felt good about praying to understand God more, rather than just praying to fix something. On the fifth day, I decided to listen to a tape that describes God's law—it's a tape of an article called "God's Law of Adjustment." I listened to it all day—it was just all I wanted to think about. I started to get a really strong understanding that God's law of good is unchanging and permanent—and it applies to me and everyone. I also thought about a passage from the Bible: "Ye shall not need to fight in this battle: set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord with you." II Chron. 20:17.
At the end of that day of praying, I decided to go to church with my mom. When I walked out the door, I realized my face had scabbed over and the rash was drying up and going away. I still looked like Frankenstein, but I was totally better after just a few hours. From that time on, my face cleared up.
This experience really helped me to see that prayer definitely works. And not just when you have a problem. I've prayed before going snowboarding or tackling my algebra homework. And this year, I've had no reaction to the poison oak in the woods behind my school.
